


starstuff

by voicedimplosives



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, But That's Only in Chapter 1, Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use (chapter 1), Drug-Induced Hallucination (chapter 1), Earn Your Happy Ending, F/M, Promise, Romance, Sex, Speeder Race, The Author Pretends to Understand how Pulsars Work, Tumblr: reylofanfictionanthology, Weird Planets, i know it says major character death, not even death, nothing is permanent in fanfiction, pinky swear, wait wait wait
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 11:05:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 40,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15971054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives/pseuds/voicedimplosives
Summary: When a star collapses, there are three stages: black hole, neutron star, white dwarf.No one – well, almost no one – in the whole galaxy burns as brightly as Supreme Leader Ren. But all men, like stars, must die.In other words: this isStar Wars, by way ofSliding Doors. Or perhapsStar Wars, by way ofGoldilocks and the Three Bears. Variations on the inevitable, is what I’m saying.Because there are a lot of different ways a person can ‘die’... y'know?





	1. black hole

**Author's Note:**

> So much love to my wonderful beta readers, [Sheryl](http://starr-destroyer.tumblr.com/) and [Becca](http://baldoren.tumblr.com)! AND thank you so much to the RFFA for picking such an inspiring theme, especially [Mod Mneme](http://mnemehoshiko.tumblr.com/) and [Mod Briar](http://thewayofthetrashcompactor.tumblr.com/) for all of their help! <3
> 
>  _“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of **starstuff**.”_  
>  ― Carl Sagan, _Cosmos_

**“Black holes of stellar mass are expected to form when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. After a black hole has formed, it can continue to grow by absorbing mass from its surroundings.”**

 

Supreme Leader Kylo Ren stares out the _Supernovae_ ’s transparisteel viewport, looking at but not truly seeing the inky, star-encrusted mantle of space.

 

An uninterrupted stream of thoughts flows through his mind, each one burbling up and over the last — the cautious way Luke used to smile at him, his mother's plaited hair, the mission he has entrusted Hux with in the Maw Cluster, a recurrent vision of cold lifeless asteroids floating through the void.

 

Every time the stream drifts towards Rey, he tries to redirect it. He mostly fails.

 

All his life, he has been lied to. Lies about Vader, about his parents not fearing Ben's latent connection to the Dark side, about Luke being able to instruct him and steer him back toward the Light — all presented as truth, until their facade was shattered. Snoke, his supposed master and deliverance, ensnared him in the worst lie of all — the lie of Rey. A manipulation, a dejarik game played by a shrewd intellect, so that he could move the pieces as he needed in order to win.

 

So that Snoke could take the Light's final piece — Luke.

 

He thinks back to the slaying of both his masters — almost five years ago, to the day — and then Kylo can no longer divert his thoughts from Rey.

 

He'd thought that they understood each other, in that hut on Ahch-To, that _she_ would be honest with him, that she would choose him. She made him believe; she gave him hope.

 

One more lie to throw on the heap.

 

Hux has sent word that he will be reporting soon for his mission debrief. He cannot halt these thoughts of her, so he lets his eyes sink close and envisions her as she was, in a throne room just like this one. Tendrils of sweat-dampened hair clinging to her shining face, breathless, eyes brimming with unshed tears. She asked him not to choose this. And he wanted—

 

_What? What had he wanted from her?_

 

_Does it matter?_

 

She did not choose to stay, she is not here now. That inscrutable look she gave him as the _Millennium Falcon'_ s ramp rose between them was the last time he glimpsed her _true_ face.

 

The memory of it, of his father's dice vanishing in his gloved hand, how low she’d brought him — on his knees in front of her like a supplicant begging for scraps — makes him feel as though he has been turned inside out. His vulnerable organs must surely be exposed, ready for harvesting — one more so than the rest, where it thunders against his rib cage.

 

She played the game admirably, the scavenger. He can concede that. She strung him along until she could break free of the bond Snoke forged between them, and then she was gone.

 

 _No_ , he thinks, dissatisfied with his own metaphor. He is not inside out, he is an ouroboros — it is Kylo who has been harvesting his insides all these years, eating his own heart again and again whenever he recalls how her hand rose towards his — the hopes he'd held in the useless chambers of that very organ.

 

She is his weakness. This is what Snoke would tell him, and funnily enough, he imagines Luke would agree.

 

 _I have become so much more since then_ , he thinks. _I am more than an easily frightened child, I am more than a passing infatuation, I am more than a tempestuous brat. I am the Supreme Leader._

 

As if in confirmation of his mantra, he hears the familiar hydraulic hiss of the turbolift doors at the far end of the sepulchral, vaulted throne room and then Hux's precise heel-toe march advances towards him.

 

Kylo waits, letting his eyes linger on the stars a moment longer, until he hears Hux stop and sink to one knee.

 

“Supreme Leader,” he says, his voice reedy and snide. The disdain he feels is audible, but Kylo has performed enough demonstrations of his capacity for ruthlessness that the General knows better than to indulge in his insubordinate tendencies. Hux thinks his nasty little thoughts, but the man has sense enough to fear the Supreme Leader.

 

Kylo knows this because he probes his underlings' minds frequently, digging around for insurrection, for insecurities, sifting through the very thoughts they believe make them who they are. He pulls all of that into himself — he is voracious, these days, to know all of it. Everything.

 

 _One day, perhaps, you will try to kill me. You will finally choose ambition over life. And then I will annihilate you. Until that day, you live by the grace of me_ , he muses, frowning at the General's pale, clean-shaven face.

 

“Rise,” he says, at last, when he has discerned that Hux's knees must surely be aching. “Tell me what you've found.”

 

Hux is holding a crumbling stack of bound papers in his gloved right hand. Flakes of it waft into the air as he stands. With a start, Kylo recognizes it for what it is — paper, made from actual plant matter. Very old, very frail. A rare commodity, in a galaxy that writes its missives on plastisheet and flexiplast, and even then only if a computer isn't available.

 

In his mind, there is a flash of recollection: a thready, lump-ridden scroll of parchment lovingly rolled up beside the treasured gift of a calligraphy pen and a shallow inkwell on the desk of a Jedi apprentice.

 

A lie, but this — one  _he_ told to himself.

 

The General clears his throat. “Sir. We combed the Maw, although we lost quite a few ships to the unpredictable black hole fields. We discovered this—” He places the manuscript into the Supreme Leader's waiting hands, then continues, “—in an abandoned asteroid base at the far edges of the cluster.”

 

“Have you examined its contents?” he asks, carefully turning to the first page.

 

“Only to confirm that it was the article you spoke of, Supreme Leader. It is as you said—a personal diary, kept by the brilliant Imperial weapons designer Qwi Xux. But how could you have—”

 

“Good.” He gingerly turns the pages as Hux speaks. He foresaw this, in his dreams. Though Snoke is gone, his Dark master still speaks to him when his mind is pliant and loose with sleep — whispering assurances that he has chosen correctly, that it is the Darksider way for an apprentice to kill his master, that even now they will do great things together.

 

Snoke has shown him this diary, where it was stashed away — hidden from the Galactic Empire in a moment of regret — by the Omwati engineer who was instrumental in constructing the Death Star. He has already seen these pages, and he knows what he is looking for.

 

And it's there, just as he knew it would be. On an unassuming page near the center of the diary, an elaborately drawn schematic of a weapon. The weapon's shape is conical, deceptively innocuous, with a lid-like top that is ornately carved and a dish-shaped resonance torpedo launcher hanging from its pointed base. It is meant to hover just outside of the orbit of the body it will destroy — an autonomous satellite. Details of its construction — materials, assembly, capabilities — spill over onto the next several pages. There is another illustration, this one made with paint: the weapon gleams burnished gold.

 

“The Sun Crusher, sir.” Hux is grinning, his lips pulled back wide to reveal his perfect teeth. “It was a magnificent creation. Devastating, by all reports.”

 

Someday, he will have no need of crude weapons such as these. There are legends of Sith lords powerful enough to crush stars through their mastery of the Force — legends of masters who cheated death itself, and every other element of the galaxy once assumed to be immutable.

 

But past failures have shown him the prudence of having a backup plan or two. Or three.

 

And it's good to keep Hux preoccupied. There are few things the General loves more than a superweapon, and this — this is one of the most beautiful, most deadly ever devised.

 

He nods brusquely, letting the pages fall shut and returning the diary to Hux's outstretched palms.

 

“I leave this to you, General, along with oversight of its construction. I trust this will be more successful than Starkiller Base.” He can't help it, getting that small dig in. Kylo knows he should have long ago outgrown their petty rivalry, but he still enjoys watching Hux's face twist with rage whenever his beloved, ill-fated project is mentioned.

 

Hux is predictable, in that way. _He is_ , Kylo thinks in a stray moment of objective self-reflection, _perhaps the only human being I have any regular contact with anymore. The closest thing to a friend._

 

That bitter truth is too pitiful, so he redirects his mind elsewhere — Hux's thoughts. He sifts through the swirling strands of resentment and jealousy, seeking anything more than passive hatred. There is nothing; Hux will live to see another day.

 

Hux's face looks as though he has been forced to consume something rancid — his mouth is twisted, bright red eyebrows knitted down together, cheeks drawn tight.

 

“Your Excellency is wise, and will not be disappointed,” he chokes out.

 

Kylo dismisses him with an indifferent nod, turning back to the viewport. He can sense Hux’s uncertainty. The man lingers, waiting, but Kylo continues to offer him only his back. With a disgruntled little sigh, he snaps his heels — _giving an unseen salute_ , Kylo imagines, _ever the consummate professional, the little bladderweasel_ — and stomps away.

 

He hears the turbolift doors opening and closing, and Kylo, alone once more, dives back into the stream of his memories.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Rey is trying very hard to pay close attention to the proceedings of the Rebellion's intergalactic coalition meeting. They've been tucked away inside the council room of the old Rebel base, LX-Robynsun V, for hours now.

 

She really is trying.

 

But she has no head for politics. She knows if General Organa were still here, she'd cut through all the flowery doublespeak being lobbed around the massive ovoid table. She'd get to the heart of the matter, practical and incisive and sarcastic as ever.

 

That's the thing, though. Leia is not here, and she has not _been_ here for well over four years.

 

The chair they left empty for weeks after her funeral —  a gesture of respect — is filled now by the tense, compact form of General Taslin Brance. He's attempting to quell the ever-louder voices shouting over one another. He's not succeeding. Vice Admiral Dameron lounges in his chair at Brance's side, shrewdly sizing up the corporeal and holoprojected ring of delegates.

 

Not for the first time, Rey feels an errant pang deep in her chest for all of the Skywalkers and Solos she has lost — and for what might have been, if they were here.

 

Brance hazards a desperate glance in Rey's direction, but she just shrugs at him. Poe — who is her friend, who has helped to train her as a pilot and taken innumerable meals with her and who is also part of the Rebellion’s Head Command, _how strange the many roles we take_ — is rolling his eyes.

 

“Alright, enough!” Poe snaps, and just like that — the room goes silent. “Better. Now, let's start with the delegate from Thila. You wanted to add something?”

 

The delegate, a short woman with sharp violet eyes, nods. “Thila Command was an important base during the first rebellion. Our contribution to the war is well-established, so I hope no one doubts my motivations when I say that this plan is _insanity_. It will undoubtedly cost us thousands of soldiers and pilots, and we have no guarantee that it will work.”

 

Poe scratches at his chin, then nods. “Your objections have been heard, delegate. And... I think the Mon Calamari had something to say?”

 

The Mon Calamari representative, also a female, blinks her large piscine eyes at Poe while she considers her words. “We _also_ fought in the battles of the first rebellion era, in case the representative from Thila has forgotten. And _we_ think this plan is the best shot we've got—we've never had greater numbers than we do right now, and the First Order has been quiet for months, since our victory on Tatooine.”

 

There is a swooping uproar of voices, until Poe raises his hands once more. “Okay, okay, c'mon guys. Let's try to keep this civilized. Listen, how about we ask our resident mystic supersoldier?”

 

Rey snorts. “Very funny, Vice Admiral Dameron.”

 

“Well? The Force giving you any tingly sensations, visions of the future?”

 

Rey has been more or less ignored since she entered mid-meeting and sat herself on one of the crates pushed up against the wall of the command room, far outside the circle of light illuminating the table.

 

She sighs. Poe's respect for her, for what she's learned from the sacred Jedi texts and her missions to whatever crumbling temples she’s been able to find littered across the galaxy, never fails to humble her. But it is a heavy burden — being trusted with the fate of so many. To be relied on, when for so long she only had to keep herself safe. It has never gotten easier.

 

Beside her, Finn nudges his elbow into hers. He offers her a reassuring smile — the one she returns is a weak echo.

 

All eyes remain on her, but Rey feels frozen, petrified. If they are wrong, if they miscalculate — it will cost them everything they have spent _years_ building together.

 

“How about you, Commander?” Poe asks, eyes shining as he looks at Finn.

 

Finn’s smile turns wolfish. “You know where I stand, Vice Admiral. Bring the First Order here, as many ships and troops as they'll send. They're arrogant, they have no _idea_ how many allies we have. So we'll fight 'em on our home turf. Their stronghold on the Inner Rim and Core is almost unbreakable, that's true, but I don't know—something tells me if Kylo Ren thinks _Rey_ is here—”

 

Rey makes an indignant sound of protest, jabbing her sharp elbow into Finn's ribs. He wheezes out a little ' _oof!_ ', sends a rueful pout her way, but continues, “—I think he'll bring down everything he's got on our heads. Including himself.”

 

“Giving us the opportunity we need—now that we have the firepower plus the military and navy to use it—to stage a full-blown invasion of the planets aligned with the First Order,” says the Tarsunt representative of the Hosnian Prime diaspora, rubbing his furry, bearded snout.

 

“And to take _him_ out,” Poe adds, contemplative.

 

Rey _is_ trying to follow all the interwoven threads of this debate, but she's distracted by the flush that has suffused her face, hoping no one will notice. She's thinking about Kylo, or maybe about Ben. She's thinking about the eyes of a desperate man, wide and pleading as he knelt, head bowed, on his knees before her — what, almost five years ago? She's thinking about the way his deep voice dipped, every so slightly, when he begged her to join him.

 

 _Please_ , he'd uttered.

 

She wonders if he still feels that call to the Light — if he feels anything at all anymore.

 

“What do you say, Jedi?” the elderly Tarsunt asks her, not unkindly. “Are _you_ ready to kill the Jedi Killer?”

 

 _Is she?_ Rey can't be sure. Every set of eyes in the room has turned to her. Their gazes are heavy, assessing, speculative. She feels simultaneously as though she's being torn asunder and like she’s being built anew into some untouchable paragon of virtue; an idol whose import she can never hope to live up to.

 

“I—I think this is the best plan we have. We've waited long enough. The cost of waiting any longer, to the planets that are being exploited or destroyed by the First Order—it's too dear. It's time to act,” she hears herself say. A thick silence follows; a pin could be heard dropping, it's so quiet.

 

Finn's hand is warm when it slips into hers — _just like old times, always trying to take my hand_ — and the nod he gives her is approving.

 

Poe is grinning from ear to ear. “Alright then. We'll prepare the troops. Get the dispatches ready. Shouldn't take long for the First Order to pick them up, and hone in on our location, once they're sent. And when they get here—we'll be ready for 'em.”

 

“One more thing,” Rey pipes up over the rising clamor in the room. She stands, letting her free hand rest on the lightsaber hilt hanging from her leather waistband. The delegates turn back to her.

 

“If Kylo Ren comes to us—”

 

“He will,” says Poe, cocksure, leaning back in his chair.

 

Rey exhales through her nose, centering herself. “ _If_ he does, and he is seen on the battlefield—no one engages with him but me. He's a Darksider, and he's powerful, and we have no idea what he's capable of these days. But—well. We've all heard the rumors.”

 

She waits, but they all blink at her as though her dramatic little proclamation is superfluous. Of _course_ she will be the one to deal with Ren. It was always going to be her.

 

Finn's hand squeezes hers, and she nods, more to herself than to anyone else, before releasing it and exiting the meeting.

 

Pulling the saber into her hand, she heads down the Rebellion base's subterranean corridors. The weight of it in her hand feels so right, so natural, and she rolls it from the tips of her fingers to the heel of her palm, reveling in the subtle hum of energy coming from the kyber crystal within. She turns in the direction of the large chamber they've designated as the training room.

 

Suddenly, Rey has the irresistible urge to work on her Makashi defensive forms. When was the last time she practiced healing, or channeling the Force in combat? She's grown rusty, and insecurity lashes at her like a vicious Loth-cat.

 

She needs to train. Hard. Possibly from now until the day the First Order arrives.

 

The day — she knows with unerring certainty, despite her hedging with the coalition delegates — that will bring Kylo Ren back into her life.

 

 

. . .

 

 

With that certainty sitting heavy in her gut, Rey trains for hours. To her frustration, she finds her movements alternatively sluggish and skittish. When she's exhausted herself, she stumbles back to her bunk in solitude. She lingers in the ‘fresher, enjoying the abundance of water provided by the lush environs of the planet Reamma.

 

Afterwards, in her tiny cot, damp hair depositing cool droplets down the front of her simple sackcloth night shirt — _clothes fashioned specifically for sleep, what a concept, what a luxury_ — she reaches out to Kylo.

 

Perhaps it is misguided, this stupid hope she cannot crush. Perhaps it will be the end of her. But she tries, all the same.

 

 _Ben_ , she thinks. _I can still help you. It's not too late. But—the day is quickly nearing when it will be._

 

She hopes, by whatever strange alchemy in the Force that might still connect them, that maybe he is listening.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Perhaps it is too easy, considering who he is, for Kylo to slip his responsibilities when he feels that sad little itch at the back of his mind — the one that tells him she's trying to summon him again. It happened more frequently in the months following his and Luke's one-sided duel on Crait but she still tries every now and then, unable to fully give up on her machinations.

 

He throttles their connection until the buffeted silence cedes back into the sounds of the _Supernovae_ 's ventilation system and his own labored breathing.

 

As with every time she tries to reach him, he waits until a quiet off-shift hour in one of the auxiliary hangars, where old and unused scout vessels sit dormant, and then he steals one, zooming off into the void.

 

In truth, he should not be surprised at the ease with which he can steal himself away. He _is_ the only Force user aboard the _Mandatore IV_ -class Siege Dreadnought _Supernovae_. Those who are weak of mind are easily persuaded they never saw him; those who are smart enough not to fall for the old mind tricks are also smart enough to _pretend_ they never saw him.

 

The smart ones always choose life and limb over ambition, Kylo has learned. What does that say about him? But then — no one ever accused him of being a master tactician.

 

So. It takes no more than a few jumps to reach the Bothan sector, a quiet descent into the richly oxygenated atmosphere of the sea-planet Kothlis and a retracing of familiar turns down the narrow alleys of the capital, Tal'cara. Then — an unmarked door, a voice like durasteel against ferrocrete asking for a code in Bothese _(he wishes he didn't know it, but it passes easily between his lips)_ , and he is standing in the squalid den of a narco-spice dealer.

 

"Ah," the hoary old man japes, switching to Basic, "you again."

 

"You've never seen me before," Kylo tells him, throwing all of his persuasive might behind the words.

 

"Right." The man nods, and Kylo chooses to believe his deception has been maintained.

 

_Are you weak-willed, or am I? Are we both just the blind leading the blind?_

 

"Well then, what'll you have? We've got plenty of death sticks, how about those? Or perhaps some lovely glitterstim? Just in yesterday from Kessel. What d'you say, boost your telepathy a bit?"

 

Kylo stares at him evenly for a long moment, trying to ascertain if he's idiotic, cunning or bold.

 

The dealer sighs. “The usual, then? Black hole? No one ever buys that ancient junk 'cept you, but they're your credits, I suppose."

 

_Bold, then. Very stupid. Not so cunning. Unusual, really, for a Bothan resident._

 

"I'll take all of it, as much as you have," Kylo says, tossing his credit ingots onto the ground by the man's feet. "And this time, you should try harder to forget me."

 

"Could never forget my best customer," the man taunts in a sing-song voice as he retrieves the jet-black powder from a nearby cold crate and deposits it into a durasteel snuff box. He hands it to Kylo, saying, “Keep the box, free of charge.”

 

He simpers obsequiously as he kneels to pick up the fallen credits. Kylo flinches, the muscles under his left eye twitching. He should just leave. He _could_ just leave. A good man _would_ just leave. Or better yet, report this poison peddler to the authorities.

 

But Kylo _is_ the authority, the _final_ authority — the only one who counts. And he's not a good man.

 

So Supreme Leader Kylo Ren does not leave. It takes so little effort to gather the Force to him, reach out, crush the man's spine. And it feels so _right_ , giving into that resentment. Like drinking from a deep well after a long trek. Kylo feels... refreshed. Settled. He feels so good he almost leaves the junk behind, but at the last moment, he pockets the snuff box and swoops out into the alley, back towards his ship.

 

It's for the best, in any case. Black Hole is a degenerate’s past-time. No one should partake of it.

 

And the man? Well, he was a criminal. If anything, the galaxy should be thanking him.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Later, safely starfished across the immaculately-made sleeper in his dim, sharp-cornered quarters, Kylo ingests the Black Hole. It's a powerful hallucinogen known for its association with the Dark side, used heavily in the days of the Galactic Empire to better embed the sticky tendrils of darkness in the minds of its guards.

 

It hardly takes any time at all to start having an effect.

 

There is a numbness that crawls over him, starting at the tip of his toes and behind his navel. He thinks he can hear his own heartbeat slowing. The dimensions of the sleeping chamber's walls and ceiling shift, melt, warp. The temperature plummets, then soars; he becomes so hot he can feel the sweat trickling down his back under his heavy gambeson, which he hastily removes.

 

All at once, he seems to be hovering in the air, looking down at a shower of sparks and the crimson-clad bodies of the dead Praetorian guard strewn across the floor of the _Supremacy_ ’s throne room.

 

The throne is a hard landing place, Snoke's severed torso practically under his feet, and he lets out an involuntary _'oomph'_ on impact.

 

The heat is stifling. _Was it this hot?_ Kylo remembers the garish red curtains going up in flames, but perhaps the rest of that memory has been blurred by his foolish sentiment.

 

Oh, but who even cares when — from the corner of his eye, he spies her — Rey is here with him? Not _that_ Rey, not the one who left him behind.

 

 _His_ Rey.

 

She's dressed just how he likes, because why wouldn't she be? He can have anything he wants, he can have _anyone_ he wants. Any _way_ he wants.

 

And Kylo wants Rey, but he wants her like this. She's bordering on indecent in a black slip, its long skirt slit to her thigh and its neckline dipping down to her navel. Despite the temperature of the room, her nipples are tight and Kylo licks his lips as he watches them press against the shifting shimmersilk of her dress. Barefoot, she pads closer, mindfully sidestepping the fallen guards.

 

Her kohl-lined eyes sparkle and her left cheek dimples as she gives him a crooked little smile.

 

"Supreme Leader," she purrs, and sinks to her knees before the dais.

 

"Empress," he answers, trembling fingers outstretched towards her.

 

He's shaking. _Why? Is it the drug? Has he taken too much? Is this going to be the time when he finally, finally—_

 

But she's creeping up the steps now, on her hands and knees, letting him see down the loosely draped front of her dress, underneath which she wears nothing. She crawls over Snoke's body, giving his torso a vindictive shove with her heel as she passes. Then she's there, nuzzling the crown of her head up into his palm until his fingers thread through the roots of her long chestnut hair.

 

"What do you need, my love?"

 

Her hands come to rest on the seat of the throne, to either side of his spread legs, and she's wedged her slender body between his thighs. She lowers her face to his lap, darting her hazel eyes up at him playfully, then licks a lewd line from the inseam of his right pant leg, up the laced front of his leather breeches, to its thick waistband.

 

He pulls in a shuddering breath.

 

"Don't ask me silly questions, Empress," he spits out. “We're long past that, now.”

 

"Mmm, you're right. I only ask because I love hearing you tell me what to do," she hums.

 

But her clever fingers are already working at his laces, tugging them loose, and then she pulls him out, gently sliding her soft little hands up and down his throbbing cock — _no, that's not right_ , he thinks faintly on a sleeper somewhere far away where he is stroking himself, _her hands would never be that soft, not after a lifetime of scavenging on Jakku._

 

It doesn't _matter._ It's how he wants her.

 

"I don't love you," he groans through clenched teeth when her perfect lips slide over the head of his cock, her velvety tongue collecting the opalescent fluid that's beaded up there.

 

She hums again, more spiritedly this time, and Kylo's hips buck up of their own volition, shoving his straining member halfway down her throat.

 

She gags on it, eyes tearing up, then releases him and rears back on her heels, but she's still smirking up at him. "Let's say, for argument's sake, that you _don't_ love me. I'm still here, aren't I? You _want_ me to be here, lover, and here I am... just how you like."

 

"How is that?" He feigns ignorance, challenging her with a mulish stare. In response she climbs up onto his lap, pulling her dress over her head and tossing it behind her. It flutters in the air for a moment before landing somewhere near Snoke's remains.

 

Kylo doesn't care if it's real, doesn't care if this ever happened — when he pulls those sharp-boned, narrow hips towards his and positions her just so, she sinks down onto him with a happy sigh. It's a beautiful sound. Warm, tight, plush, quivering wetly around him — her lips stretched wide in a perfect _'o'_ , her painted eyelids fluttering — it's so good he has to close his eyes, center himself. He strokes the symmetrical dimples above the tight curve of her bottom, then slides his hand up her spine, forcing her to arch her back for him so he can lave at her pert, bouncing breasts while she rocks against him.

 

She tastes like sweat and woman and his nanosilk pillowcase and _who cares, who cares if it's real, who cares what might have been if he can have this_...

 

" _Yours_ ," she lets loose in a soft mewl when he takes back control, one hand falling to her hip to still her so he can thrust deeply while the other can't seem to stop stroking the smooth planes of her back.

 

He gyrates smoothly until she starts to roll her hips again, then he snaps up into her. Not a give and take — only him, _taking_ , setting no particular rhythm, just enjoying the feel of her. It quickly becomes too much, and he begins to thrust with brutal force. Buried to the hilt, then out as far as he dares, again and again, with single-minded purpose. The sound of their damp skin slapping together echoes in the cavernous room. It's obscene, sultry, all-consuming. Kylo wants to curl up inside of this moment for all the rest of his days.

 

Her words become a mantra whispered breathily in his ear and he _knows_ it's just his own mind giving him what he wants, just the drug creating all of this out of his own depraved fantasies but when she whines—

 

"Yours, yours, yours, oh Supreme Leader, only yours—"

 

—when she clenches down hard on him, her tongue flat as she licks along the jagged scar bisecting his cheek—

 

Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, alone on his sleeper, comes all over his hand.

 

 

. . .

 

 

They're having a party. There's jet juice and emerald wine and Ipellrilla firewater. Nobody is drinking to excess — they've got a battle to win tomorrow, after all — but everyone _is_ trying to live a little, during their last night on Reamma.

 

There's music; an old autojuke Rose has dug up from somewhere is playing something jazzy and upbeat. There's dancing, the elder contingency of the Rebellion shuffling a gentle two-step around the mess hall while the younger members thrash their bodies against one another.

 

Everyone believes the misinformation campaign is going to _work_. It took almost six galactic months for the Rebellion to ready their military for this offensive, six months since the last time she's tried to reach _him_ , but once Finn gave the go-ahead and Poe deemed the pilots ready, they prepared the poorly encrypted messages to be sent out from their base. There's nothing to do now, but send them.

 

They're celebrating preemptively, which in and of itself makes Rey nervous. But Finn and Poe — _the boys_ , as she's come to privately refer to them — have told her that within hours of the First Order picking up their message, their fleet will be at the Rebellion's door step.

 

 _Better to celebrate now, whether this goes right or wrong_ , Poe had said, with that easy smile of his.

 

So they revel.

 

Tomorrow they'll live, or they'll die, but either way — everything will be different. There will be no going back.

 

Poe sits beside Rey now, his back to her as the boys engage in a match of arm-wrestling. It's a close thing but at the last minute, with a loud groan, Finn forces Poe's wrist to the table. Rey carefully peels the thick orange rind of a Domrai fruit to get at the flesh inside. It's an acquired taste, the Domrai, tart to the point of bitterness.

 

“Ah-ha, sucker! You're up!” shouts Finn.

 

“Rematch when I get back.” Poe is grinning as he rises from his seat to fetch them another round of drinks.

 

“How y'holding up, Rey?” Finn asks, leaning across the back of Poe's empty chair. Rey pops a crimson-hued wedge of the wet, pulpy fruit in her mouth to forestall answering. Her lips pucker at the sharp flavor prickling across her tongue.

 

“Yeah,” she says after swallowing, with a small nod. “Good. I'm good.”

 

She hasn't had a drop to drink, she's merely a spectator at this event. She cannot allow even the _ghost_ of a hangover to cloud her judgment, not if she's going to face Kylo Ren tomorrow. She pulls another wedge of the fruit from its rind.

 

“You're thinking about—uh, _him_ , aren't you?” Finn asks, and Rey wonders (not for the first time) if he isn't maybe just a little Force-sensitive himself.

 

She gives him a sardonic look.

 

“I'll take that as a yes. You scared?”

 

“I don't know, Finn,” she muses, chewing. “A bit. A—lot, actually. I—you know what happened between us, on Ahch-To. And the _Supremacy_.”

 

“Yeah...” His head is cocked, waiting for the rest of whatever's coming.

 

“I never—really—Inevergaveuponhim,” she blurts out. “I just thought, with time, that he'd come back to the Light. But—”

 

“He hasn't,” Finn says. Then, his eyes narrowing, “You're hurt?”

 

“Well, yeah. I guess. I wanted...” She trails off, unable to finish that thought.

 

“Just promise me this, Rey. If you see him tomorrow—”

 

“ _When_ ,” Poe interjects, not needing to be told the subject of their conversation. He he settles back into his chair and hands a drink to Finn, who takes a long swallow before continuing—

 

“Sure, _when_ you see him tomorrow, don't let your compassion get the better of you. He’s not that person anymore. Okay?”

 

Rey lets her face settles into something steely, a bit distant. Her eyes rove over the room full of soldiers, pilots, engineers, civilians, doctors, mechanics, teachers — but she doesn't really see any of them.

 

Instead, she sees a face that's been inked onto the back of her eyelids for years, dark leonine eyes staring down a strong nose at her, asking her — _her, Rey, Nobody of Jakku, a scavenger with deadbeat parents_ — to rule the galaxy at his side.

 

She looks down at her hands — they're blood-red and sticky to the touch, covered in the juice of the Domrai fruit.

 

“Okay,” she says. “I promise.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

He never goes easy on himself, but today — as if he can sense that something is coming, the very space between molecules buzzing with foreboding — he drives himself to the brink of exhaustion.

 

Appel, his right foot heavy when it lands on the mat in a thunderous stomp. Lunge, barreling towards his opponent. Attack, a heavy overhanded swing with his right arm. Retreat, using the momentum of his thick muscular body to spin away when the ASP-19 battle droid almost nicks him. Deflect and riposte, when the droid swings its saber, attempting to mount its own attack.

 

He doesn't have _her_ here, doesn't have her lightsaber clashing against the shrieking, jagged blade of his own, so he makes do with battle droids and when they are available to him, his knights. He leans heavily on Form VII, Vaapad, keeping the ASP-19 constantly in a defensive position. He strikes with unpredictable ferocity; where once there was an entire battalion of droids working in tandem against him, now there is a smoking heap of dismembered, hissing scrap-metal piled up in one corner of the sterile training chamber.

 

Lunge. Attack. Retreat.

 

From the far wall of the room, a throat clears itself. Kylo Ren looks up from his blade and the droid in front of him, and suddenly realizes he has no idea how long he has been sparring.

 

“Supreme Leader,” Hux drawls, holding a datapad out towards him. “Apologies for the—interruption. But I think you'd better see this.”

 

He deactivates the droid with little more than a flick of his fingers, then switches the activator on his lightsaber and affixes it to his belt.

 

When he takes the datapad from Hux, he reads the intercepted HoloNet missive three times before he believes what he is seeing. Surely the Rebellion would not be so reckless as to use the outdated Ghostwave encryption?

 

He feels something akin to disappointment at how easily this sudden turn in their favor has arrived.

 

Scanning the message — sent from the planet of Reamma to one of the Rebellion's frigates — a fourth time, he finally asks, “The Sun Crusher?”

 

Hux's excitement is a palpable thing; the air grows thick with it and Kylo has to breathe through his nose so as not to retch.

 

“Ready and awaiting its inauguration.” His lips are pressed tight, but his eyes are aflame, thick eyebrows vaulted towards his Titian hairline. Kylo entertains a passing fantasy of bisecting Hux the way he did Snoke — watching his face contort from exhilaration to shock, to agony, to the frozen grimace of death — but he does not. There isn't time, not now, not when they _finally_ have the location of the Rebellion's headquarters.

 

“Prepare it for travel, along with the fleet. I want my ship ready as well. We leave within the hour.”

 

“Do you think it's _wise_ , sir, to be present during the attack?” Insinuation drips from Hux's voice as he takes the datapad back. “Perhaps you and the _Supernovae_ should stay behind.”

 

“Are you suggesting that we will fail? Or that you think I should not be in control of the combat?” he asks, without malice. He just wants to toy with his General, bat him around like a Loth-cat does a Loth-rat and watch him dance.

 

“No—that is not—I only meant, you are the _Supreme_ _Leader_ , Ren. You are no longer required to partake in these sorts of things.”

 

Kylo leans in close, until he can see Hux's nose wrinkle from the smell of his perspiration and discomfort at their proximity.

 

“Yes, I _am_ Supreme Leader. And when we destroy whatever remains of the Rebellion, I will be witness to it. With my own eyes.”

 

Hux gives a small nod, and takes a step back. He hesitates, and Kylo can see the wheels turning in that overworked brain of his, before the General gives in to his curiosity. “Are you sure it has nothing to do with the likelihood of _her_ being there?” His pale face pinched, he adds, “The Jedi?”

 

“General,” Kylo rumbles, sanguine, because he no longer has anything to hide from this once-competitor — now subordinate. “It has _everything_ to do with the likelihood of her being there. Ready the fleet.”

 

There must be something in the look on his face, because Hux composes himself, bows, and leaves without another word.

 

Kylo turns back to the training droid. He should go prepare, but—

 

Just five more minutes.

 

Appel. Lunge. Attack.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The opening salvo of the Battle of Reamma begins in the usual way — an eerie silence that haunts the empty halls of the Rebellion's base. They have evacuated all civilians, the pilots and soldiers wait in the hangars for High Command's word. The High Command themselves monitor the skies from the hectic control room, their signal jammers ready.

 

Rey sits under a copse of aquamarine-needled evergreen trees, not far from one of the base's secret subterranean entrances. Legs folded, palms resting on the dark soil, the boughs above her sway in a breeze of her own making; fallen nuts and pebbles hover in the air around her.

 

Calm. Peace. Balance.

 

There is a sound, something between a leak-seeker balloon popping and a great breath of air being accidentally inhaled, and then the cloudless sky above is crowded by the distant fleet of _Dreadnaught_ -class heavy cruisers and Star Destroyers.

 

Among them Rey can see, clear as day, the pale grey, wedge-shaped _Supernovae_.

 

An ion cannon is charged and fired. The first blasts blaze down through the atmosphere, setting fire to the dense forest just a few kilometers south of LX-Robynsun V. The smoke begins rising at once, like dark wispy ropes lazily drifting upwards.

 

Rey inhales, holds the sweet air in her lungs for as long as she can, and releases it.

 

Then she rises, calling her saber through the air from where it has been resting on a nearby boulder.

 

The First Order has arrived.

 

It's time.

 

 

. . .

 

 

She is so close he cannot shut out her presence now — he can _feel_ her, like a body can still feel a missing limb. Kylo clenches his fist, watches their artillery methodically obliterate the Rebellion's first squadron of X-wing starfighters sent up at them. Then the second, and the third, each wave of starfighters blown into smithereens by the fleet's cannons and turbolasers. The Rebellion is returning fire from their base, they have taken out some of the First Order's smaller frigates and starfighters. And yet...

 

How can they be so incompetent? _Something is not right_. Where is their fleet, their real fleet? They should have larger ships, they should have rallied and staged a counter-attack by now. The First Order is winning this battle, easily, and although he knows the Rebellion is a ragtag band of impoverished Outer Rim sectors, he _cannot_ believe they would choose such a poor line of defense for their main headquarters.

 

“Strange,” says one of his colonels, from a nearby communications dock. “We’ve lost contact with the remainder of the fleet, back in the—”

 

“Enough,” Kylo growls. “Send the troops down. It's time to end this.”

 

Even with victory nearly in hand, even when the reports from the ground paint a portrait of an unprepared army retreating on foot into the forests around the base, Kylo cannot subdue the live wire of anxiety squirming in his chest.

 

Hux informs him, with barely muted glee, that the Sun Crusher is in position, ready to lay siege to the system's primary star as soon as the First Order's stormtroopers have returned to the ships.

 

_Something is not right._

 

He rises from the captain's chair, stepping down from its dais and drawing nearer to the bridge’s floor-to-ceiling viewport.

 

He wrestles with his indecision for only an instant longer, before he does it — releases the tight grip he has held on their bond all these years, exposing himself to all of her thoughts, feelings, sensations.

 

And at once he is subsumed by her consciousness. She's grown used to his inattention, his well-fortified walls blocking her, and she is unprepared to defend herself against his deft probing of her mind.

 

 _No_ , she hurls furiously at him. _Get out!_

 

But it's too late. He's seen everything — the plan, yes, the deception and the trap the Rebellion has prepared for them, but also the onion-like layers of her psyche. Her innermost thoughts, which have lain shrouded and waiting for him.

 

 _You always_ were _skilled at self-deception, Rey. We'll be discussing this. I’m on my way._

 

She's seething, her rage like a tempest lashing against him, and he wears a grim smile as he leaves the command deck of the _Supernovae_ without a word to anyone, his feet carrying him in sure, unhurried steps towards his TIE silencer.

 

Hux attempts to intercept, and is thrown into a nearby doorway for his trouble. This cannot be stopped, or postponed. He must go to her. He must finish this.

 

It's time.

 

 

. . .

 

 

He consumes her before she even has a chance to prepare any sort of defense, before she can even brace herself.

 

One minute she is swinging her glowing blade at an approaching stormtrooper, and the next—

 

He is there, in her mind with her, already so deep that she cannot shake him.

 

And he sees everything. Her fear, of him and of the plan failing and of never living up to the legacy of the Jedi and of all the responsibilities that have been stacked upon her thin shoulders—

 

He knows instantaneously the exact size of their fleet and what planets those ships are currently attacking and precisely what methods they're using to overthrow the First Order strongholds there.

 

He sees the hours and hours she has spent teaching herself to duel, pouring over the Jedi texts, rifling through the rubble of the old temples in search of answers.

 

He sees the endless lonely nights spent with her hand shoved down her pants, hoping that a weak orgasm or two will finally silence her turbulent thoughts and allow her a paltry few hours of sleep.

 

He sees her longing, splinter-sharp as ever.

 

When he releases his unshakeable hold on her — taunts her and promises he is coming — she kills the stormtrooper almost without thought. Her body is on autopilot as she pivots and abruptly takes off from the main battlefield, where Rebellion soldiers have been alternately keeping the stormtroopers away from the base and drawing them into the trees to be picked off.

 

She maneuvers deftly between the towering pines, her legs burning as she propels herself forward.

 

Rey can sense him now. The bond is open, and she sees — as though it's a recollection in her mind's eye — he has left the _Supernovae_ , is flying down into the atmosphere, is landing, is trailing her...

 

Terror, cold and fierce, claws at her throat. She does not stop running, but she does project her surroundings at him.

 

_Let him come._

 

And this is the plan, of course, it was always the plan — but she's shaking with trepidation at what is about to happen. The ground has begun to slant upwards, she is ascending into the foothills of one of Reamma's snow-capped mountains. Rocky outcroppings project through the trees, rising up around her and funneling her into what feels like an ever tighter and narrower path.

 

How odd, how perfectly reminiscent of Takodana, like a mirror of their first confrontation.

 

She's slowing, yet still she tries to climb. Her lungs are on fire from the effort of running so hard.

 

He's behind her.

 

Kylo's barely winded, and somehow in this moment, despite how ridiculous it is, that is the thing that makes her angriest of all.

 

She halts in her tracks, turns, and thumbs the activator of her lightsaber. Their eyes meet. His are bloodshot, irises flecked an unnatural golden hue and sunken into a sallow face. _Can I do what needs to be done?_ she silently asks him.

 

“You won't,” he sneers, advancing towards her.

 

Her blade hums between them, but his remains dormant, clipped to his belt.

 

Rey says nothing, unable to trust herself with speech. He's dressed as he was the first time they met, although he’s foregone the mask. The frayed ends of his cowl sway behind him as he lumbers forward. He lowers the hood, and Rey notices he has let his hair grow long; it is gathered carelessly in a leather band. The ends of his belted tunic swing around his long legs.

 

He is all in black, of course, and when he extends an arm towards her, the leather-clad fingers of his hand spread wide, she is so overwhelmed by the sight of him that he pulls the saber from her hands with very little trouble.

 

It's in his fist, and she's staring at it, transfixed, not by his manipulation of the Force but by her own hammering heartbeat.

 

“Rey.” He clips her saber to his belt beside his own, and comes so close that she has to tilt her head to stare up into his glowing eyes. They're impassive, they give her nothing but she can feel him, in her mind, taking _everything_ , despite how much she has trained in the hopes she would not let this happen —

 

The leather of his glove is rough when he cups her cheek, his hand sliding down to the nape of her neck, grip bruising. He does not relent, will not look away.

 

“I don't care,” he breathes, “about your foolish plan. Even if you _can_ hold whatever planets you take—and you can't, you won't be able to once our work here is finished and our fleet returns—I don't care.”

 

 _No,_ she thinks. _No no no._

 

He's pulling her towards him, and by the holy stars, she's letting him. When Kylo leans down, brushing his lips against her own as his other massive hand latches onto her waist, her body colliding roughly with his — she lets him.

 

“I understand, now. Your deception—not here, today—but before. On Ahch-To. I was—conflicted. You used it against me because you were fighting for your survival. Rey—” he pauses, mouthing at her jugular, his tongue darting out to taste her rabbit-rapid pulse, teeth dragging lightly against her skin. “I forgive you. I don't love you, I might never love you. Still, I _can_ forgive you. But only if you make it right, and stand with me. Can you finally make it right, Rey? Are you ready to do the _right_ thing?”

 

Rey knows what he is asking for; he's already proposed like this twice before. But she needs to know — not the sinister words he's breathing against the thin, delicate skin of her throat — rather, the contents of his soul. She sucks in a breath, letting one hand rise up to rest against the dark hair at his temple. He hums his pleasure at her touch, rocking his hips into hers. Letting her eyes flutter shut, she pushes in.

 

 _A maelstrom_. This is what she's met by. Rage, jealousy, vengeance. Passion. Lust — for her, _no not for her_ , but for a grotesque approximation of her he has constructed in her absence. He really believes that she was playing with him, that she betrayed him all those years ago. And he wants her still, but he wants to _own_ her, to control her in the way he could not control the others who have lied to him. He only wants her cowed, subservient, breathlessly scrambling to serve his every whim and wet for him every time he decides to pull open her legs and—

 

There's more. A ravenous lust for power, despite everything Kylo has attained. The memories — all the dark trails he has traversed in search of power in the years since last they stood before each other. The terrible things he has done, the pieces of his soul he has traded because of his hunger for _more_. It's too much. She gasps and kicks out blindly, her knee landing solidly against his groin.

 

And Kylo Ren is very powerful. He is strong with the Force, he is the Supreme Leader of the galaxy. But he is still a man, who can be hurt in this way. He doubles over with a weak groan. Rey clenches her fist tight, and swings as hard as she can for his jaw. Kylo bellows, reeling back from her.

 

She blinks. Freed from the heady spell of his touch, she watches him watch her. His teeth are clenched, his hands cupping his groin.

 

“You—” he seethes.

 

“Yes, me. I know what _I_ have to do now,” she says, calling her saber from his belt. It hurtles through the air and sings in her hand, and when she lights it, the drone of the plasma blade grounds her.

 

She's ready.

 

 

. . .

 

 

 _The terrible law of threes_ , Kylo thinks, the pain in his groin turning his stomach. _Three times I have offered you everything, and three times you have rejected me. No more._

 

He inhales, his long nostrils flared, and uses that pain as he draws his lightsaber, thumbing it on. It shrieks, its striated flares of light jumping wildly.

 

For a fraught instant — or eternity, who can say — they stand there, their blades drawn and pointed at the other. Neither moves, and Kylo cannot be sure if they are even breathing.

 

He'd decided, in the time it took the First Order to jump to Reamma, that he would be the one to attack first. But here in the forest, the sounds of battle very faint, he knows he will not be. Despite everything — he cannot.

 

She's lovelier than he remembered. Dressed in the simple, belted robes of a Jedi, but even they — for all their humble asceticism — are unable to hide the subtle curves of her body. She looks good, and strong, well-fed and well-loved. His jealous heart recoils, and he cannot strike at her.

 

So it is Rey who finally lunges at him, teeth bared in a shrill war cry as she bring her saber downwards at him in a two-handed grip.

 

 _You really_ have _been studying_ , he taunts.

 

“Don't _do_ that,” she spits at him, swinging again. For all the work she's done, she's never had anyone truly skilled in lightsaber combat to practice against, and her movements are powerful, but still somewhat crude. She does not move with his grace, not when she's on edge like this. And she doesn’t realize, he supposes, how loudly she is projecting her fear at him.

 

But she still manages to land a hit, grazing his on-hand arm and leaving a smoking, cauterized gash behind.

 

“Kriff!” he curses, then charges at her. His assault shifts into graceless hacking, mirroring her own. Their fight is brutal. He slices the tender skin near her ribs, she gets in a searing cut across his shoulder blades. He manages to drag his jagged, burning red quillion against her own saber hand and smiles in grim victory when she yelps and drops the blade, then spins, scrabbling up the rockface wall behind her.

 

 _All of this has happened before. Will all of it happen again, bone of my bones?_ he croons to her.

 

“Switch off!” she shouts back, without pausing her frantic climb.

 

Except — then she _does_ pause. Her eyes are pointed up at the sky, and Kylo follows her gaze.

 

The Sun Crusher, he knows, is not visible to the naked human eye from the planet's surface. It measures barely fifteen meters in height. But the effect of its eleven resonance torpedoes burrowing into Reamma's nearest star, a white dwarf named Kuras, _is_ visible. It is light years away from them, and yet they watch — Rey, clinging to the rocks above his head, Kylo, saber hanging forgotten at his side — as the sun seems to swell and brighten. Squinting against the glare, Kylo thinks he can see dark sutures beginning to rupture the star's white-hot surface.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Do you understand yet, Rey? Get down from there, and come with me—you don't have much time left now.”

 

Enraged disbelief ignites within her, blazing hotter than the expanding star above their heads, melting away whatever insecurity or fear is left. She pushes back from the rockface, spinning and pulling her saber into her uninjured left hand as she falls. By the time she lands, on her feet and lightsaber ready, she has forgotten everything but the black void of her rage.

 

She swings at him indiscriminately — no style, no form, no art — just a scavenger's savage hacking. He parries most of her blows.

 

Until he doesn't. Dipping to her knees to avoid a strike of his, she shoves her humming blade up almost vertically through his gut. She can see the end of it glowing over his shoulder. Rey is almost certain, by the ashen pallor that washes over his face, that she has nicked his heart. She retracts the blade and leaps up to stand before him, wary and ready for his next attack.

 

He drops his lightsaber in shock; it makes a dull thudding sound when it lands by his feet. His face is haggard, horror and pain chasing each other across his features.

 

 _By the Force, is it getting bright now,_ she realizes. The light is almost blinding, it's too much—

 

Kylo staggers and collapses, injured hand on the ground behind him. She lifts her sword so she can swing it down towards his neck, _finally_ ready to finish this, because all she has left is her rage, and because surely, a man who can blow up a sun cannot be turned back to the Light— but before she can, he snarls. The fingers of his good hand have gone rigid, clawlike.

 

Then a different kind of heat is coursing through her body — not anger, but energy.

 

Force lightning, lurid white as it arcs from his fingers, splintering and crackling as it reaches her, setting her nerve endings ablaze. She can smell acrid smoke. Is it from the trees, where the First Order has blasted them? Is it her own body?

 

She falls to her hands and knees in front of Kylo, dropping the lightsaber.

 

The onslaught continues. _It burns, it burns, it burns, please no more—_

 

 _Stop,_ she calls to him. _Ben. Please._

 

He does.

 

 

. . .

 

 

He's fallen onto his back, where he watches the verdigris pines tremble high above his head. The wound she's given him across his scapula twinges with each breath. It's really getting bright now, almost too bright to keep his eyes open.

 

But then — it's as if time rewinds itself. The light begins to fade. He suspects this odd turn of events may not _actually_ be happening. The darkness may be him, a problem with his vision, the light behind his eyes dimming in a way that makes him remember long twilight hours spent hiding from his fighting parents in the tall grasses of Chandrila, watching the light seep out of the world and the cobalt evening rush in—

 

He lays a gloved hand on his abdomen, and it comes away sticky, blood-red. Time is still marching forward, then.

 

“Ben?” A weak, hoarse whimper, from somewhere near his feet. He wants to lift his head. He wants to see Rey's murderous, treacherous face — the only one he has ever truly loved. It's safe to admit that to himself now. That love surges up inside of him, bitter in its ardor and its tardiness. _Just one more time._

 

“Come here,” he grunts, breathing shallow.

 

She hisses a curse under her breath as she drags herself up his body, until she is resting atop him, chest-to-chest, her legs lying between his own. The weight of her is so perfect — even as her hip bones grind down into the mortal wound she has given him, even as the added pressure on his failing heart accelerates its bleeding — Ben marvels at the feeling of her _real_ body against his.

 

“I could—” Her voice is faint, barely more than a wheeze, and she lets her head fall forward, nuzzling her face against his pectoral. She pulls the cowl away from his chest and face. “I might be able to heal you.”

 

“It would kill you,” he says.

 

“I think I'm going to die anyway.” She's crying, he realizes, hot tears soaking into the high neck of his tunic.

 

His limbs are going cold, and he thinks things should be getting brighter because logically he knows that very, very soon Kuras is going to go nova and incinerate them all if they don't get out of here, and yet—

 

It's getting so dark.

 

“I'm sorry,” he says, and he can feel his own tears now, blazing a scalding trail from the corners of his eyes down his temples and into his hair. “I'm so sorry, Rey. I—I was wrong.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I love you. I've always loved you, from that first day in the forest—no one else but you, and I should've left with you—we could've been happy—could've made a family of our own—I love you, I love you, oh Force don't let it end like this—” He's babbling, every word is horrifically painful but demands to be spoken. The dam has broken and the tears will not cease; his chest shakes and jostles Rey.

 

“I waited—oh, Ben, I waited so _long_ for you. My whole life,” she sobs, against the underside of his jaw.

 

“I know, I know you did. I was—never going to be what you needed—” The words are difficult to form in his mouth, his thoughts going slippery and sinuous like fish in a stream. He cannot seem to grasp hold of them firmly. They slip through his fingers.

 

 _Fingers_ , he thinks.

 

He raises his, still bloody, and threads them into the damp hair at the base of her neck. He cannot speak anymore. He knows now — it's almost over. Is that relief, prickling at the edges of his consciousness?

 

 _Maybe we'll have another chance._ He sends the thought across the bond. Rey lifts her head with difficulty; her hazel eyes — once bright, once avid and young and wise — are dull. Bloodshot, like his own. _Maybe I'll do better next time._

 

She nods, and pushes herself a little further up his torso so that she can haltingly lower her lips to his.

 

 _Next time_ , she assures him. _Or the one after that._

 

The last thing he feels is Rey's lips pressed against his, wet and firm and breathing death into his mouth. He looks into her sorrowful eyes until his vision is swamped by a rapid succession of flashing images: a cautious smile, an unmarked door, a bitter fruit dripping blood-red juice, a clenched fist. He smells smoke. He tastes the salt of Rey's tears on his tongue.

 

He blinks, one last time, and then never again.

 

This is how Supreme Leader Kylo Ren dies.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Every movement sends pain coursing through her entire system. Greedily, Rey pulls Ben's last breath into her own mouth, before his neck goes limp, his head rolling away from her. His eyes are open, and unseeing.

 

The searing heat of Kuras is painful. The final echoes of this man’s broken, grasping love for her, pushed across a fading Force bond, are painful. Her lightning-singed body is painful.

 

Kylo Ren is not hurting her, he cannot do anything to anyone anymore, but she is still wounded by him, perhaps beyond repair.

 

Rey needs to get up. She needs to hobble back through the forest to the base. She needs to get herself onto one of the Rebellion's shuttles with the High Command and whatever military they have left. She needs to rejoin the fight and make sure that the First Order is eliminated from the galaxy. She needs to be the Jedi they deserve. She needs to be a friend to all the people who love her. She needs to leave Ben’s body here in the forest.

 

But the man is her gravity, pulling her in as he always has. She lowers her head to his chest, where there lies a heart no longer beating, and closes her eyes.

 

She takes a deep breath.

 

 _Next time_ , she vows. _We will be enough for each other._

 

Then she surrenders to the darkness that is singing its siren song, just for her, and lets go of all the rest.


	2. neutron star

**“Neutron stars are the smallest and densest stars... They result from the supernova explosion of a massive star, combined with gravitational collapse, that compresses the core... to that of atomic nuclei.”**

 

Supreme Leader Kylo Ren stares out the _Fellfire_ 's transparisteel viewport, dazedly beholding the inky, star-encrusted mantle of space.

 

Taking up most of his view is Crait — a glowing orb fixed amid the stars, its crimson veins of rhodochrosite substratum branching out across the planet's salt-white surface.

 

_How is it possible that I have tasted such victory, and such defeat, in the space of the same day? The same hour? The same breath?_

 

He doesn't know who he is addressing. Perhaps he is hoping Rey, who he can feel lingering like a half-forgotten dream, will come back and explain all of this to him.

 

It's Luke's voice that answers. “Which part of this would you call a _victory_ , kid?”

 

Kylo doesn't need to turn to see him from the corners of his eyes. Luke is at his side, luminescent and diaphanous, the austere furnishings of his quarters visible through his robes, but here, all the same.

 

“I'm not a kid,” he mutters. “You're dead, Skywalker. I killed Snoke. I... am the Supreme Leader now.”

 

“Supreme Idiot, more like.”

 

Irritation flares, but Luke raises his hands, his wry chuckle filling the space between them. “Sorry. That was uncalled for.”

 

Kylo says nothing, in the hopes that stony reticence will banish his uncle's ghost.

 

“I meant what I said.” Luke's voice is gentler, still dry, but open, inviting, like an offered hand, and he presses his lips into a thin line. “I _am_ sorry, Ben.”

 

“That's not—”

 

“Your name? Please. That's not how names work. We don't get to kill the past, or erase it. We _live_ with our regret. It's with us, all around us, just like the present and the future. That's the Force, Ben. You _know_ this.”

 

Kylo ducks his head, looking down at his black leather-gloved hands.

 

“I reject your hypothesis,” he says, sullen.

 

Luke snorts. “Sure, fine. Listen, just do me a favor, will you? Rey—she's powerful. Like you. And she's—confused, like you. You want to play at being the big bad emperor? Well, I'm not physically here to stop you. But—she cares about you. Don't blow it.”

 

“You think I'm not good enough for her.” It's not a question, and he refuses to look to Luke for an answer.

 

“Didn't say that.”

 

“I should leave her alone?” This time, despite his intentions, his voice raises inquiringly — posing a question whose answer he does not want.

 

“I think—you shouldn't close yourself off to her, and her influence. But you shouldn't drag her into this mess you've made, either.”

 

“I don't want your opinion,” he snaps.

 

“Yes you do. You asked, Ben.”

 

He can't think of anything to say to that, so he retreats back to the safety of muteness.

 

Luke's presence grows fainter, his light dimming. But he doesn't disappear completely. In silence they stand together, prodigal nephew and spectral uncle, watching Crait grow smaller and smaller in the viewport.

 

It's the closest that Kylo has ever felt to him.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The _Millennium Falcon_ is not really equipped for the number of people onboard, despite the Resistance — now officially a Rebellion — having their ranks decimated by the recent battle with the First Order.

 

They’re bunked up by twos and threes, many sleeping on the floor in the corridors and the galley. Everyone is exhausted and trying to grab some rest while they drift along the very edges of the Outer Rim.

 

Rey is among them. She feels like she hasn't stopped moving or thinking or fighting since she dived into that dark cave at the bottom of the island on Ahch-To. She's curled in the fetal position in a quiet corner of the cargo bay, wrapped up tightly in a scratchy bantha wool blanket, eyes squeezed shut and trying desperately to still her racing thoughts so she can give her body the rest it's begging for.

 

It’s not happening, though, so she extends her mind past its limits, reaching for Kylo's.

 

_Are you there?_

 

She feels nothing, hears nothing. _Probably a fool's errand,_ she thinks, _but it was worth a shot._

 

Just as she is sinking into that liminal state between wakefulness and sleep, she hears it:

 

_I'm here._

 

 _Are you going to let us go?_ She knows, if he wanted to — if the First Order wanted to — they could chase them to the ends of the galaxy. Farther, even.

 

_My war's not with you. You know that._

 

 _I'm with the Resistance. The Rebellion._ You _know that._

 

 _That does throw a wrench in things._ It's so strange, hearing his voice, dry as a bone and as clear as though she'd formed the thought herself. She snorts quietly, then buries her face in the cradle of her arms.

 

_I'm not giving up on you, Ben._

 

Another weighted lull, and then:

 

_Good._

 

The connection falls dormant, and Rey sleeps soundly for a long time after.

 

 

. . .

 

 

He's taken to roving the halls of the _Fellfire_ , in the hours when most of the crew is sleeping or performing menial tasks and the constant buzzing of their souls in the Force settles down to a gentle murmur.

 

There are six shifts aboard the massive _Resurgent_ -class Star Destroyer, rotated amongst almost seventy thousand personnel, so it is a murmur only in comparison to times of battle or emergency, when all hands are on deck. Still. At odd hours of what might pass for night aboard the _Fellfire_ , it's almost quiet.

 

Kylo doesn't want to see anyone in his wanderings. He has no mission to accomplish now: Skywalker is dead, there is no Snoke to give him orders, Hux has developed the uncanny ability to never be in the same place as him. He is... listless.

 

There seems to be nothing for him to _do_ , at the moment.

 

Everything happened all at once, in the span of a few hours, when Rey came to him and he killed Snoke and they fought the guard and he met Skywalker in battle on Crait, and now — he is unsure what is supposed to happen next. Perhaps he should be hunting down the remaining Rebellion forces, and yet each each day, despite the lack of any other pressing duties, he finds some reason why he cannot begin that particular task.

 

Hux has taken to sending a corporal with a datapad around to update him on their progress back towards the closest ship-building installation, where the construction of a new fleet has already begun. There are notes as well, on delegates who want to speak to him about publicly declaring their planet or system's allegiance to the First Order. Soon enough there will be ceremonies, and meetings.

 

The thought of sitting through any of that is enough to make his legs itch.

 

He spars, but it’s only with battle droids; the Knights of Ren disappeared right around the time Snoke’s torso was liberated from his legs — almost as though the only thing banding together a group of dangerous, criminal Darksiders was Snoke’s adamantine will.

 

He trains, he broods. Still, he cannot sleep.

 

And so he roams.

 

Kylo is down on a less trafficked level of the _Fellfire_ 's underbelly. He's stumbled upon an unmanned ground vehicle storage bay and is digging around in the turbine engine of a rusting, half-forgotten combat speeder when he hears her.

 

Rey is humming something, wherever she is. He catches at it, pulling until her voice becomes closer, firmer — like she's here in the storage bay with him, her sweet warble bouncing off the high ceilings.

 

And then she _is_ here, or at least, he can see her. She's sitting on the ground, legs sprawled, wiggling her toes, leaning back on her arms and basking — presumably in sunlight. Her hair is wet, as is the length of grey linen wrapped around her chest and her simple leggings.

 

She looks so _content_. Her skin is golden, sun-kissed, and Kylo thinks he can almost make out the outline of her nipples through the sodden breast band. He tries to tamp down on the surge of his searing lust, tries not to feel offended by her happiness. He focuses instead on the melody, then jolts, realizing—

 

“Is that a Shyriiwook lullaby?” he asks, more aggressively than he intends.

 

Rey is slow to open her eyes, and when she does, she simply smiles up at him, warm and lazy.

 

“Chewie taught it to me,” she murmurs.

 

“I—remember it.” He wants to be there, wherever she is, sun-drunk and happy. _Let me come be there, with you._

 

“Have you ever been swimming before?” she asks, eyes slipping shut again.

 

“Yes, back hom—on Chandrila, there are lakes. I grew up swimming in them,” he answers, ready and eager to share this private fact about himself. He chooses not to examine _that_ too closely. Not right now, anyway.

 

“Today was my first time,” she admits, her smile turning a little bashful as she peers up at him.

 

 _Force, I want to be there with you now._ The thought is too loud, she hears it — he can tell because a blush pinkens up her cheeks, spreading down her neck to her delicate clavicle.

 

“I didn't mean for that to be...” He swallows.

 

“I'm not. I wish you _were_ here. You could be, you know.”

 

“I... have business to attend to,” he says, abandoning the speeder and lurching back towards the door. He barrels out of the storage bay and down the corridor, desperate to flee her and her sunny day and her wet body and her easy smile.

 

 

. . .

 

 

She'd felt so good, after slipping away from the makeshift base they've established and diving into the frigid turquoise waves of Ahch-To's endless ocean. She'd been sitting there, enjoying the sun warming and drying her. The salt that had crystallized on her lips had made every hummed breath she'd taken taste slightly tangy, and the cool damp sand had felt so different from the merciless grit of Jakku, as she sifted it between her toes.

 

And then _he'd_ shown up. Tinkering around with some vehicle until he felt her — his focus on her in an instant, laser-tight, molten dark eyes narrowing with something—

 

No, she knows what it was. It was hunger. Desire. She's seen it before, on Jakku. In the eyes of the smugglers and traders who passed through the Niima outpost. It's just never quite made her feel the way it does when she sees it in the eyes of Kylo Ren.

 

But there had also been longing thrumming through the bond, so strong it nearly matched her own. And she wonders, not for the first time (and she suspects not for the last): _what if? What if I didn't run away from this?_

 

She walks slowly back up the beach, then begins to climb the rocky cliffs that soar up behind it. Her mood lightens as she exerts herself, as though she's left her vexation back on the sands below.

 

In a way, she has.

 

The Rebellion has chosen to situate themselves on Ahch-To, on an island close to the home of the first Jedi temple. Originally, Leia _(practical as ever)_ had suggested that they use the temple island itself. Rey cringes, recalling her awkward confession about what a nuisance she'd made herself to the Lanai caretakers during her time there with Luke.

 

But Leia had taken it in stride, with a raspy chuckle. “Got on their bad side, huh? Remind me to tell you about Luke and Han's introduction to the Ewoks on the forest moon of Endor sometime. Alright, we'll find a different island.”

 

 _This one is better for our purposes anyway_ , Rey thinks. Larger, not quite so elevated, featuring broad plains filled with forests and fields between each ascending cliff. It's a good choice, and looking over the camp of collapsible little DuraShelters and larger, communal plastents they've set up on the island's widest plateau, Rey thinks they've done alright for themselves here.

 

“Morning. How was the water?” asks Rose, slipping out of a nearby DuraShelter. They're only meant for one person, but not a moment after, Finn crawls out behind her. His grin is sheepish, but he swings his arm around Rose's waist and pulls her close. The look the Rebellion’s head mechanic gives him makes Rey's heart ache.

 

“Lovely,” she says. “There's a nice little beach, if you climb down the rocks on the south side of the island.”

 

“Oooh, a beach? Beaches mean sunbathing.” Rose is waggling her eyebrows at Finn, and Rey laughs, the last of her agitation at Kylo’s rejection dissipating in the face of their happiness.

 

 _I want that_ , she thinks, her throat constricting.

 

“Did I miss anything important?” she asks them.

 

“Just the impassioned speech I gave,” Poe interjects, coming up behind her and wrapping an arm around her shoulders, “pleading for people to start cleaning up after themselves in the mess tent. I don't care if you _are_ a Jedi Knight, Rey—nobody wants to wash your dishes for you.”

 

“Oof, sorry,” she says, leaning into Poe's embrace. “But I'm no Jedi Knight, and I hate washing up.”

 

“You'll get there,” he throws back, as he saunters after Rose and Finn, who have directed themselves towards the beach.

 

“Get this, skyboy,” she grumbles, good-natured, before heading towards her own DuraShelter. After a quick change into a clean tunic and trousers, she plants herself on a soft patch of moss outside her tent flap. Legs folded, hands digging into the spongy flora beneath her, ears pricked for the sound of the wind rushing up from the sea—

 

_I shouldn't have—before. I was rude._

 

Kylo's voice, in her mind — apologizing? She tries to take the unexpected turn in stride.

 

 _You're forgiven, your worshipfulness_ , she teases.

 

Rey thinks that will be the end of it, so she closes her eyes and attempts to commune with the island, the sea around it, the Force that compels it all to hang in such perfect balance.

 

 _Am I interrupting you?_ He sounds… sad. And unbearably lonely. Rey knows something about that.

 

_You aren't. Is something wrong?_

 

She can almost feel him sigh, from wherever he is. _No. Only—will you tell me something, about yourself? Will you—_

 

A pause. Rey waits. _Come on,_ she thinks. _You can do it, Ben._

 

The silence between them stretches on, and Rey begins to think he's shut out the bond — that he's given up.

 

 _Will you talk to me?_ he asks, at last.

 

She cannot fight the smile from blooming across her face. _I will. Something about me, huh? Okay. Have you ever heard of a happabore?_

 

He's amused. _I can't say that I have._

 

 _They're hideous._ She drums up her most recent memory of a happabore encounter — the gargantuan porcine creature sloshing around in the communal well at the Niima outpost, snorting its displeasure with a band of traders who had gotten too close.

 

_Disgusting._

 

She grins. _Truly. Not aggressive, though. Unless you get between a baby and its mother. Which—well, one time I came home from a long, hard day to find an infant happabore had stumbled inside my shelter and made itself comfortable. So of course, I had to..._

 

To the members of the Rebellion, it will seem as though Rey whiles the morning away in meditation. Her face will remain serene, eyes closed, with a soft smile playing at her lips. Only Kylo and Rey will know that they've spent those hours exchanging stories about their home planets.

 

It's possible, of course, that people may suspect something — perhaps when Rey bursts into a riotous gale of laughter, sometime before noon. Some of them might even be tempted to ask her what she finds so funny. And later, _she_ will be tempted to ask Leia about her son's aversion to Chandrilan bulabirds, just to see if his story is true.

 

They won't ask her, though. And Rey won't ask Leia, either.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Kylo Ren wakes from a light doze to find a clenched fist, bearing a gleaming obsidian dagger, hovering above his heart.

 

He reacts on instinct — his hands envelope the wrists of the assassin, and then he is out of his sleeper, wrestling the man to the floor, not even needing the Force to overpower him.

 

Once Kylo tightens his grip on the wriggling assassin's wrists, the man drops the dagger. Then he gathers both wrists into one of his hands and leans in close.

 

“Who sent you?” Anger and adrenaline are making his heart march double-time — the sound of it in his ears is nearly deafening.

 

“Who?” he demands. His free hand swings down to deliver a sharp right hook to the man's jaw.

 

The man — certainly human but otherwise a perfect stranger — glares up at him, still fighting to unseat Kylo. _Have it your way_ , he thinks, rolling off the man and affecting a defensive crouch. He raises his hand, and through the Force he lifts the assassin up until his feet are no longer touching the cold durasteel floor, then squeezes hard, compressing his windpipe.

 

“Last chance. Who?”

 

But the assassin stays silent, clawing at his throat and thrashing wildly, kicking at nothing but air. He has not even attempted to speak, and Kylo interprets this to mean that he never will.

 

He respects this.

 

So after he delves into the assassin's mind — not gentle or slow, but rather tearing out the information he needs — he makes his death a quick one.

 

It’s Hux, of course. He knew before he began that it would be, and yet he feels a sort of detached disappointment at how sloppily his General has gone about attempting his coup d'etat.

 

 

. . .

 

 

When he kills Hux, Rey is there with him. He can feel her horror, and afterward, he is plagued by the fear that he has lost her forever.

 

She cuts him off, going silent for weeks.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Two galactic months later, another attempt on his life is made.

 

This one is even more poorly planned than the last — the man attacks him while he is sparring.

 

He has a kriffing _lightsaber_ in his _hand_ when the man charges at him, armed with nothing more than a blaster pistol.

 

It's not even a fight, let alone a fair one. The man is disarmed and whimpering before he's within swinging distance of Kylo's jagged blade.

 

This one talks, though. His employer is the former High Colonel Mashodik, who was promoted to the rank of General in the wake of Hux's... expiration. Kylo, unable to contain his burning fury, kills them both, assassin and General. It is painful for them; there is a great deal of begging before the end.

 

Afterwards, soaked in their blood and his own sweat, he stands in his quarters and screams for Luke to appear — to excoriate him, to condemn him, he doesn't care.

 

He weeps, he tugs on his hair, he tears everything in his quarters to shreds. He reaches out across the galaxy for Rey and asks the same of her. _Please don't make me bear this all by myself. Tell me I am a monster, tell me I am beyond saving, just say something._

 

They both remain silent, and remote.

 

The rifts in his soul grow deeper.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Although Rey has seen with her own eyes what Kylo Ren is capable of, the shocking violence of Hux’s execution is... too much.

 

She’d thought, when she left him unconscious on the _Supremacy_ (so serene, a face so young when free of his anger), that she would be able to wait him out.

 

But it has been months, and still, he is like a sparking live wire inside her. Still, he is capable of horrors.

 

She feels his loneliness, though. It keens in her, calls to that same loneliness she has carried all her life.

 

So one night, tucked away in her shelter, she burrows down deep in the bantha wool blanket she's stolen from the _Millennium Falcon_ , and releases the chokehold she's held on the bond.

 

It flares to life, as if he has been waiting for her.

 

 _Rey_. Like a heavy sigh of relief.

 

She figures she might as well get to the point. _I know what it is to be alone, Ben—so alone that your thoughts begin to chase each other around your brain like ravenous gnaw-jaws. I know what it is to cry yourself empty, and sleep not because you're tired but because you want to escape your own life._

 

She tells him all of this, and then she waits. He's gone silent, like he is also waiting.

 

 _That's why I'm back_.

 

 _Show yourself to me,_ he demands, greedy as ever.

 

She shakes her head, and belatedly realizes he can't see the motion. _I can’t. I'm exhausted, I've been reading through Threepio's translations of the Jedi texts all day, and—_

 

_I could help you with them, if you brought them here..._

 

It's a desperate gamble, she knows it and she senses that he already knows it too, even as he's thinking it.

 

 _Sorry._ He sounds contrite, soft, safe — no more than a distant rumble of thunder.

 

 _Can't_ you _show yourself to me?_ she needles him. _I thought you were the almighty Kylo Ren._

 

And like that — he's there. He's in the tent with her, or she's in his quarters — their surroundings are somehow _both_ the silvery, thermal-insulated walls of her little tent _and_ the shadowed angles of a Star Destroyer. It's disorienting.

 

“There you are,” she says, resting her head on her thin regulation pillow as she drinks in the sight of him.

 

“Here I am,” he agrees. He settles down, stretching out to lie beside her. “Show me the sacred texts?”

 

“Are you doing this? You can't be, the effort would kill you,” she demurs, smirking.

 

“You can't feel it, Rey?”

 

She feels her smirk falter, unsure what he means. “Feel what?”

 

“ _We're_ doing it. _Together._ ” Now it is Kylo who grins, just a little, just a twitch at the corner of his lush mouth. He edges closer to her on the shelter's thin pallet. His body — even laying on his side — dwarfs her own.

 

“I don't want to show you the texts,” she confesses in a whisper. “I don't know if I can trust you.”

 

“I’ve already read from them.”

 

“Still, I just—”

 

“Yes,” he sighs. “Okay.”

 

“But I _do_ want you to hold me.” She can't look at him, his gaze feels like it has slowed the flow of the blood in her veins to a heavy sludge. It's as if the weight of his dark eyes on her is pushing her down through the bedding, the thin plastene flooring, into the moss, the soil, the cliffs, the sea, the very bedrock of Ahch-To.

 

“I can do that,” he utters hoarsely, his heavy arm encircling her and bringing her into his wall of a body. He radiates heat, and Rey sighs, hiding her face in his firm chest. He coughs, a little. “Like this? It's... okay?”

 

Her eyes sink close of their own accord; her hand snakes around his thickly muscled waist to lightly scratch her name in the contours of his back.

 

“It's okay. Just like this,” she murmurs.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Somewhere around the fourth time the tall, spindly Muun who runs the InterGalactic Banking Clan compares his _illustrious_ grandfather's rise to power with his own _meteoric_ ascension, Kylo Ren decides that he hates Muunilinst, the diplomat's planet.

 

 _Why stop there?_ he thinks. It dawns on him — he hates these meetings. Hates the cloying tones of these planets' representatives, hates how they simper and flatter. Hates the priceless but meaningless trinkets and bobbles they bring as means of bribery.

 

Hates sitting at this polished xellwood table, in one of the _Fellfire_ 's designated diplomatic relations chambers, listening to them drone on and on about their homeworlds, how beautiful they are, how welcome he will be.

 

 _I don't care about any of this_ , he thinks. Once unleashed in his brain, the thought cannot be returned to its cage. _This is my mother's vocation, not mine._

 

 _Then why do you stay?_ Rey's tone is careful, gentle. It's no longer intrusive, for him, when she pipes up like this.

 

Kylo's leg bounces under the table, and he fights hard against the urge to get up and _walk_. He squeezes the bridge of his long nose, nods with whatever forbearance he can muster at the exiting ambassadors.

 

The next are already waiting in the doorway, gilded diplomatic pouches held aloft in outstretched hands.

 

 _I'm not sure I know anymore_.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Assassination attempts three and four are as unsuccessful as their predecessors.

 

Retribution is meted out just as swiftly, and yet, it does nothing to stem the wave of insurrection that is rising on the _Fellfire_. Instead, it seems to feed it. The more severe Kylo's treatment of the assailants and plotters, the more vicious the next attempt.

 

Attempt number five is almost a success, and this is the beginning of the end, for Kylo.

 

It's poison this time, a coward's weapon, and it is only by the grace of a fast-thinking service droid that Kylo is brought back from the brink of death after eating the cryptberry-laced meal.

 

 _If I had not been so distracted by you, and my own dissatisfaction, this would not have happened_ , he tells Rey, as he lies on a steristeel table of the _Fellfire_ 's officer medbay.

 

 _I'm just glad you're alive. And okay._ Her relief is tangible, and it is almost enough to ease his fury, his malaise.

 

Not quite though, because in his heart, Kylo knows he is _not_ okay. Nothing about this is okay.

 

It takes him another two standard weeks of meetings, of back-breaking sparring sessions with the battle droids, of sleepless nights spent wondering where the next attack will come from, before he's ready — and even then, it is Luke who pushes him over the edge. As per usual.

 

He has just finished sparring with said droids, and is making his way through the long shining halls of the _Fellfire_. He is rank, he knows, soaked with acrid sweat which he suspects carries a whiff of desperation. Several officers, who _have_ never and _will_ never engage in melee combat, fail to hide their disdain as they pass by him. All their lives they have controlled and destroyed their conquests from the safety of a pressurized command deck, behind shatterproof shields, on the backs of stormtroopers and pilots.

 

As he ponders this, nearing the door to his quarters, Luke is suddenly there, walking beside him as though called forth by his line of speculation.

 

“But it’s different for you, isn’t it Ben? It's never stopped costing you, the choices you've made. Where they've taken you.” Luke speaks calmly, following Kylo into his sleeping chambers.

 

“That's finished, now,” he says. He is also calm. What is the point of raging at Luke, when he's not even really here? Kylo has grown too tired for rage; he's burnt himself out on it. Only a sad, heavy ember remains of what was once an unstoppable inferno.

 

“It's not. You know, I think if Han were here—”

 

“Don't,” he says.

 

Luke continues without acknowledging the request, “He wouldn't be disappointed in what you did to him. Han was pragmatic, yes, but Leia's the true realist. Your father had a real sentimental streak, although he tried to hide it. You know what I think would get to him?”

 

Kylo sits on the foot of his sleeper, elbows resting on his knees and damp hair veiling his face. “I cannot hear this from you today, uncle,” he pleads. “Stop.”

 

“He'd be disappointed that you went to all the trouble of killing him, and you didn't even bother to _learn_ anything from it. It changed _nothing_. You're still no Dark lord, kid, and you still shrink from the light in your soul. What have you _learned_ , Ben? When are you going to repay the _cost_ of all that you've done?”

 

A weak howl, thin and wavering, is drawn from his chest before he can stop it. Kylo's head sinks lower, he is practically doubled over, his forehead nearly touching his knees.

 

“Does this look like balance to you, Ben? Does it _feel_ like balance? My own father gave his life so that—”

 

“That was just one moment in a life full of more important choices,” protests Kylo, heatedly. “That's not who Darth Vader was, not until the very end.”

 

“It was _his_ choice, the last one _Anakin_ ever made. You don't think that matters? Think about your father's last choice. Think about _mine_. Tell me they meant _nothing_ —go on, tell me they haven't changed you.” Luke's voice has gone quiet, but flinty. There is less sympathy in it now; this is too important, it seems, for him to be gentle with Kylo anymore.

 

_“Stop!”_

 

There's been this noise in his ears for weeks, a dull roar like an ocean before a storm, or the low growl of a speeder's engine when it is revved — and it has been growing louder all this time. His mind feels like poorly oiled gears, like rocks tossed against each other in a merciless tide — grinding, scratching and scraping as he attempts to turn over his thoughts.

 

_What has all of this been for?_

 

And then — he looks to Luke. Luke's words have been blunt, sparing him nothing, but his expression is not angry. His uncle's is the face of a person who loves him, who has not given up on him. Kylo thinks of another face, far younger and more feminine than the glowing blue visage before him, of a dainty freckled nose that wrinkled sleepily before she realized he was there with her on Ahch-To, of cutting hazel-green eyes that cry or crinkle from joy with equal loveliness, of rosebud lips that have promised to help him.

 

 _What has all of this_ been _for?_

 

He nods, shaky from adrenaline and grief, and steps towards his 'fresher. His uncle leaves him, and he washes his body mechanically, unseeing, before dressing himself in the same fashion.

 

After, he surveys the contents of his quarters. There is not a single thing in the sterile chamber that means anything to him. There is nothing that he will take with him, now that he is finally doing this — now that he is ready to abscond.

 

_Save one._

 

He clips the lightsaber to his belt, and when he looks up, Luke is there again.

 

“I want you to know,” his uncle says, like he has already peered inside Kylo's heart, has dug through the contents of his mind, “that I'm proud of you. And Han would be too.”

 

A nod. That is all he can manage. It's enough; Luke nods back, and is gone.

 

Kylo does not bother with one last look at his quarters. There is no one left to say goodbye to, even if it were in his nature to do so. There is nothing left for him to do but leave.

 

So he leaves.

 

It takes little effort for him to slip into the senior officer's lifeboat bay. They are all locked so as to prevent deserters, but that hardly matters. He raises his hands, spreads his fingers wide, and manipulates the locking mechanisms. He draws on the Force, feeling his way through the controls of the lifeboat, a state-of-the-art model which he knows contains the resources to sustain one man's life for at least a month. Its door opens for him.

 

It is time.

 

Kylo has started to draw attention to himself. The commanding officer on duty, Security Major Biztositas, has caught his eye and is now coming towards him at a swift clip.

 

He takes one last look around the small, mostly-deserted hangar. Its few occupants have stopped what they are doing — frozen, in shock or relief he does not know — but he blocks them out, uninterested in their emotions.

 

_What has it all been for?_

 

Biztositas is drawing closer.

 

Kylo sighs. With one hand he freezes the man where he stands, and disables the _Fellfire_ 's tractor beams, its laser cannons, this quadrant of its shields. Then he climbs inside the lifeboat, closing the door behind him.

 

As he navigates the pod out of the hangar, he is pleased to find, after a cursory perusal of the controls, that it's equipped with a hyperdrive system.

 

“Punch it, Chewie,” he says to no one, hoping that wherever Han Solo is, he might be able to hear. He charts his flight on the astrogation controls, pushes down hard on the throttle lever, and sucks in a deep breath as the stars around him begin to stretch horizontally, brilliant white lines streaking across his viewport.

 

And with that, he releases his hold on everything in the _Fellfire_ that might have prevented his departure.

 

It is perhaps a little anticlimactic, this quiet abdication, but that does not quell his deep sigh of relief.

 

 _I am free,_ he thinks, settling into the pilot's seat. _Surely_ this _is what it has all been for._

 

This is how Supreme Leader Kylo Ren dies.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Somewhere in the Mid Rim, around the Thusa Sector, something very odd begins to happen. Ben cannot say with any certainty how long he has been passing through hyperspace — long enough that he has trained himself not to watch the glowing lines outside the cockpit's viewport, that he has had time to sleep in the pod's cramped, uncomfortable bunk and glut himself on energy pudding.

 

But then, the perpetual darkness — altered only by the ghostly streaks of nebulae and star systems — is interrupted by a light so dazzling that Ben must squint as he peers out the viewport.

 

Something is affecting the flight pattern he has mapped out, it is interrupting the trajectory of his tiny lifeboat, drawing him in towards this inescapable light.

 

 _Oh kriff_ , he realizes. _A pulsar._

 

But it's too late — the wildly spinning neutron star has disrupted all the lifeboat's systems. An alarm begins to sound, the muted glowpanels suddenly switching to rapidly blinking red. Ben takes his seat at the controls and tries desperately to escape the pulsar's gravity, but it’s no use.

 

He pulls the little lifeboat out of its lightspeed jump so as to avoid a full-on collision with the star. The pulsar earns its name — as it turns, its light seems to throb brighter, then dimmer. After adjusting the phototropic shield settings on the viewport until it filters out most of the star's blinding light, he studies it — each revolution takes less than a second. It's like a twinkling diamond in the void.

 

And then — the pulsar swings him around just as its electromagnetic field completely fries the lifeboat's engine and controls. The lights go dark, the alarm falls silent. He is hurtling, powerless, through space. A planet looms large before him, dark grey and sediment-dull. One minute, he can still see the dark edges of space around its periphery. The next — he can see only the planet. After yet one minute more, he feels the duralloy hull of the lifeboat rattle threateningly, in a way that tells Ben he's begun to enter the atmosphere.

 

_Ben, where are you? You're panicking. What the hell is going on?!_

 

 _Are you going to sit and watch or are you going to help me?_ he seethes at Rey, the ship shaking so hard his teeth that have begun to chatter.

 

There's no stopping this, not with a lifeless set of controls, an equally dead engine, and the looming mass of the planet, so he's only trying to slow himself down. Ben takes a deep breath, trying to center himself and fight gravity through the Force, but everything is working against him, and within seconds of frantically sending Rey a mental image of his surroundings, the ground — hard, jagged rock, not a living thing in sight — has begun to rush up towards him.

 

A wave of something cool and soothing washes over him, and the lifeboat's descent begins to slow.

 

_How's that?_

 

It's working. Wherever Rey is, from across the galaxy, she's helping him. They work together — intent, focused, strained — as they steady the little pod, gently dropping it onto the planet’s rocky surface.

 

Somehow, Ben has survived his first encounter with a spinning neutron star. Because of her.

 

 _You're incredible,_ he thinks.

 

He can feel her preen, just a bit. She's embarrassed, too, and he thinks if she were here in front of him he might be able to catch her blushing. Something in him inflates at that, then collapses upon itself at the idea that she does not receive praise all the time, is not inundated with people singing her virtues.

 

 _Anytime_ , she tells him, her tone light. _Ben, what's going on?_

 

 _Later_ , he sighs at her. Leaning his head back against the seat, he listens to the metallic pinging and groaning of the hull as it settles into the ground. _For now—just stay with me._

 

 

. . .

 

 

He is on the planet Bedlam. He learns this later, after carefully studying the lifeboat's star-charts. The pulsar that drew him from hyperspace, that flung him into this planet's atmosphere — it is the Bedlam pulsar. The name rings familiar, but Ben cannot recall the memory, not fully.

 

He is forced out of the lifeboat after only one solar cycle — which, by his estimate, lasts about eight hours. Four hours darkness, four hours light. The life support systems never come back on line, degraded beyond repair by the same electromagnetic wave that fried the controls and the engine.

 

The planet is arid, and uninhabited, but the air is breathable. Barren grey mountains surge up from the soil in jagged, soaring peaks. Despite the pulsar's insatiable push and pull on Bedlam, it’s actually quite far from the star — when Ben looks up in the sky, it is like a remote winking beacon. The pulsar winds, however, cause the upper atmosphere to be stirred into a ceaseless tempestuous stormcloud — constantly shifting from a woolly lavender-grey to a bruise-colored puce to a plummy, velvety black.

 

It's disorienting, at first — especially after so long living on a Star Destroyer — so Ben avoids looking up. That's easy enough to do, because everything here is heavy; it pushes on him, like he is being compressed.

 

 _That's ridiculous_ , he thinks. _I cannot be permanently altered by a planet's gravity, can I?_

 

Ben has packed everything he can carry from the lifeboat into a rucksack, which he has strapped to his back. He heads for the nearest peak in the hopes of finding shelter.

 

And he does find shelter, of a sort. The bases of the mountains are littered with caves, their stalactite-filled interiors just as dull as everything else, but harboring insentient life — some primordial ooze here, a few troglophile insects there. Soon Ben finds a cave big enough that he can stand at full height inside.

 

Exhausted, despairing, he wants to call to Rey again, ask her to be here with him — if only in his thoughts. But he doesn't know what to say, and he has already asked so much of her.

 

So he throws the rucksack down onto the hard ground, and curls up beside it.

 

Then he sleeps, and waits. For what, he does not know.

 

 

. . .

 

 

When he dreams, it is of Luke, digging his foot into the loose salt of Crait to expose the hard, crimson mineral underneath. He sees a flash of the gruesome carnage he left behind on Yavin 4. He sees his father as he always does in dreams — falling, falling, falling into the thick white smoke.

 

Then his mother appears, not as she is now, but as a young woman. She wanders the same barren planet he finds himself on, wearing the same dismayed expression that surely pulled at his own face earlier. She’s beautiful — he’d forgotten that about her.

 

Suddenly, Leia is frozen, immobilized by something he cannot see. Ben is looking at her but somehow, he is also looking _within_ her — and he can see that her heart has been transformed into a fist-sized diamond. It is a polished prismatic gem, throwing refracted slivers of rainbow-hued light onto his face.

 

She is dead.

 

Things shift. She is not the mother of his youth — she is a General for the enemy, floating through space outside the _Raddus_ , a dusting of glittering ice beginning to form along her wrinkled hands and face.

 

 _Have I done all this? What has it all_ **_been for_** _?_ This is the last thing that dream-Ben thinks, frustrated and adrift in the strange other-worldliness his subconscious has created.

 

He is so used to Rey brushing her mind against his at intermittent hours, their solar cycles usually at odds, that he thinks nothing of it when he is woken by the sound of voices.

 

“It's him, her son! I know it is, look at the eyes—they're _her_ eyes!”

 

“Shh, he's waking up!”

 

“Alright, act natural, everyone.”

 

Ben shakes his head to clear away the dream, then scrubs at his eyes. “Hello?” he asks.

 

“He can hear us, everyone just shut up and follow my lead!”

 

The cave falls silent, although when Ben reaches out, it no longer feels empty. He feels — a presence. Or maybe _presences_ is more accurate. But when he uses his glowlamp— inspecting every grotto, running his fingers along the groove in every speleogen of the cave wall —

 

He finds nothing.

 

So he returns to sleep, and Leia is there waiting for him — a heart as hard and beautiful as a diamond taunting him from her lifeless chest.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Tell it to me again, nice and slow.” Leia's eyebrows are vaulted up towards the sky, her plum-painted lips stretched into a thin, tense line. Her hands fidget, almost imperceptibly, where they rest atop her cane. Rey swallows thickly.

 

“We've been—talking. Just—that's all. We... formed a connection. When I was here before, with Luke. Snoke—”

 

At this, Leia grumbles something under her breath, and Rey is quick to nod her head in agreement. “I _know_. But. He said he bridged our minds together, only—it didn't stop, after he died. Even now, I can feel him. And—I've just helped him land on a planet somewhere. I'm sorry, that's all I—”

 

“Is it Ahch-To?” Poe asks, leaning forward, brows furrowed.

 

“No! It's, er, grey. Rocky. It looked desolate. Really, that's all I know.”

 

Leia seems to be wavering between exhilaration and disbelief. She laughs, an abrupt hiccup of emotion, then shakes her head. Quietly, she murmurs, “So he's finally out...”

 

“Are we just skipping over the part where our resident Jedi has been carrying on a secret romance with the _Supreme Leader of the First Order_?” Poe's voice is not angry, if anything, it seems like he's trying to make Leia properly laugh. But the accusation hovers in the air like a malignant cloud all the same.

 

Leia frowns, unamused, as does Rey. “It's not _like_ that,” she argues. “I was trying to help him. I haven't given up on him. I won't apologize for that.”

 

“The man killed his _own_ father, Rey. He tortured me! He slaughtered the new Jedi order, he's killed villages full of innocents, he helped destroy Hosnian Prime!”

 

“I know who is. I know what he’s done.” Rey remains resolute as she faces down Poe's steely dark gaze, refusing to budge. They stay locked in a mute standoff until Leia interrupts.

 

“Well,” she says with a shrug, “if Kylo Ren has defected from the First Order, he's going to have to face the consequences of his actions. Either at our hands, somebody else's, or his own. But I think the next step for us is to find him. And if you've really bonded with him in the way you say you have, Rey, then you should be the one to do it.”

 

Rey nods, thanking her, and before Poe can continue, she pivots on her heel and leaves the tent. Out in the bright natural daylight and the whistling breeze, she sets off to find the lonely little rock promontory on the eastern side of the island she has more or less claimed as her own. Scrambling out onto the sunbaked stone, she sits straight and folds her legs as she once did under Luke's tutelage.

 

_Ben. Show me where you are._

 

He doesn't respond, his end of their tether silent and still.

 

 _Ben. Let me_ help _you._

 

A faint rustle, like a tired body shifting its way back to wakefulness.

 

_How?_

 

She tries not to let her wild joy at the sound of his voice flood their connection, but she's pretty sure it happens anyway. _Tell me where you are. I'll come to you._

 

_Again?_

 

He's teasing, and in her relief she titters aloud.

 

_Yes. Again._

 

_I'll show you, but—don't bring Leia._

 

_Ben—_

 

_I'm not ready._

 

 _Alright,_ she concedes. _I'll come alone._

 

_Promise me._

 

_I promise, Ben._

 

 _Good,_ he thinks, and behind her eyelids, a three dimensional holomap of the Thusa sector explodes into being, quivering and electric blue.

 

 _I'm on my way._ She does her best to share her nervous excitement and hope with him. _See you soon._

 

 

. . .

 

 

After he has slept for a day and a night — about eight hours — Ben decides to explore Bedlam further. He has a month’s supply of rations in his rucksack, his lightsaber, and a few other essential supplies he’s grabbed from the lifeboat's emergency tool-kits.

 

It's slow-going: the heavy atmosphere presses down on him with every step. The landscape never really changes. Grey mountains draw near and then far again, and by the time a short night has passed and dim morning dawns, Ben finds that he has walked in a massive loop. He can just spy the light glinting off his lifeboat, a few kilometers away. Except — now he is approaching the valley where he landed by a different pass, through different mountains, and he sees something that was hidden to him before.

 

A ship, tucked behind a line of towering karsts that rise towards the sky like giant sawtooth fingers sifting up through the soil. It's not very interesting to look at — essentially a hexagonal cylinder, once white but now a dull grey like everything else on this planet, with jutting angles where the armament and engine are housed.

 

A bulk cruiser, _Neutron Star-_ class. They made an emergency crash landing, from the looks of it — just like he did. He wonders if the crew enjoyed the irony of being stranded on this rock by the very variety of star that lent their ship its rank.

 

 _Probably not_ , he decides, as he spies the gaping ingress in the starboard hull, the entrance to an empty and dust-filled hangar that probably housed at least two dozen starfighters at some point. The _Neutron Star_ -class cruisers weren’t intended for starfighter compliments, but Ben vaguely remembers seeing some that had been converted on Chandrila, when he was a boy. An old Alliance ship, then.

 

Ben draws closer. The cruiser is massive when grounded, well over five hundred meters in length and although he remembers the model looking smaller when it was in service, side-by-side with his mother's yacht, now that he is standing next to it on firm ground it looms like an imperious state building, albeit one that has seen better days.

 

Ben climbs up into the hangar.

 

Not a soul inside, and not a starfighter either.

 

He ventures into the dark, echoing halls, igniting his glowlamp to light the way. He investigates every inch of the lowest level, but finds only spare parts and more empty hangars.

 

The most likely explanation is that the crew used whatever smaller ships they were carrying to get themselves off the planet after they crashed. He wonders if they're still alive, somewhere.

 

He wants to see what's on the upper levels, but none of the turbolifts are working. Again, the irony strikes at him. Rey would know how to do this if she were here: it is, after all, how she spent her childhood.

 

For a long time, he sits on the very edge of the central hangar bay, his legs swinging over the side of the ship, booted feet knocking idly against its ceramisteel hull as he peers out at the dead planet that has become his prison.

 

He notices there is something painted on its exterior; he hadn't seen it before. A name: _Supernovae_.

 

Ben, for perhaps the first time in his life, begins to plan.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Before she leaves, mind absorbed in flight plans and trajectories and how she's going to avoid the pull of the spinning neutron star that Bedlam orbits, Leia summons Rey to her plastent.

 

“Safe flight,” Leia says, after they've exchanged pleasantries. “And—” She hesitates.

 

Rey waits. She knows there are many reasons for Leia to feel apprehensive about this mission, and she wonders which one is pressing enough for her to warn Rey in private. What she says next is not what Rey is expecting:

 

“Be careful on Bedlam.”

 

“Wh—why?” Rey had been expecting a warning about Ben, or the pulsar, or even the Dark side, for kriff's sake. But the planet?

 

“I've been there. I was young, on a mission during the first galactic civil war.” Leia pauses again.

 

“There's something very powerful, and very old, that lives on Bedlam. I encountered them when I was there. They're—how can I explain this?” she sighs. “They're naive, childlike—they don't understand the consequences of their actions. They killed me, for sport. They brought me back to life afterwards, just as easily.”

 

“Will I recognize them?” She's trying to understand, and isn't quite sure that she does.

 

“Only if they reveal themselves to you. They're non-corporeal, unless they choose to take shape. Just—be careful, that's all. And tell my son—”

 

“Yes?” she prompts.

 

“Oh, I don't know anymore. I'm sure you can think of something better than I can. Tell him I love him, I suppose.” Leia slumps down in her chair, looking exhausted.

 

“I will,” says Rey. “I'll tell him that.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

He treks back to his lifeboat to search for it, and his luck holds out: in an ancillary tool-kit, there is an ascension gun. Returning to the _Supernovae_ , he pries open the turbolift doors with brute strength, then calls on the Force to keep them ajar while he shoots the gun's grappling hook as far up the narrow shaft as he can aim it. It catches on something, the syntherope attached to it pulling taut.

 

Ben climbs.

 

The next level up from the hangars houses mostly barracks. He gives them no more than a quick inspection before he's back in the shaft. Level three promises a wealth of interesting finds, seeing as it houses the training chambers, the medical bays, and the food storage facilities. The highest level belongs to the command deck and officers' quarters.

 

Carefully, he belays back down to the third level.

 

The food lockers are numerous, well over a hundred of them along the corridor, each labeled with the contents within. Fruit, vegetables, meat, nuts, seeds — the real stuff, nothing synthetic. And then, further along, there _is_ synthetic stuff: ration bars, protein cubes, synthsteak, pastebread.

 

 _I could live a thousand lifetimes on this ship and never go hungry_ , he thinks in dazed wonderment.

 

Ben moves in that day, settles himself in one of the luxurious (if slightly musty) officer's quarters on the fourth level, and falls into the nanosilk sheets.

 

He is asleep in minutes.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The days and nights pass so quickly on Bedlam, so much more quickly than Ben is accustomed to. Every chronometer he finds has been fried from its encounter with the dangerous rays of the distant pulsar.

 

He compensates for this by making his own tally, carved into a blank plexisteel wall in his quarters. One mark means one solar cycle. It's tricky, because sometimes when he is out exploring, an entire day, a night, and another day can pass. But Ben never forgets to mark the time that has passed when he returns to his new home.

 

The rest of his time is spent training, eating, and sleeping. His dreams are always the same. He hears nothing from Rey, and does not dare to bother her. Perhaps she has changed her mind, perhaps she really _is_ on her way. He has already asked too much.

 

Logically, Ben knows he has not been stranded for more than a few weeks. And yet, time moves so strangely here — he feels as though a thousand years have passed.

 

 _It's just the short days,_ he tells himself, _and the terrible nights._

 

There are forty-two lines scratched into the wall when something finally _happens_.

 

One morning he is jumping out of the hangar bay, ready to spend another day listlessly exploring, when he sees it, in the distance—

 

A small, angular starhopper, already settled in the dull earth, its canopy closed but the cockpit empty, an astromech droid just visible in the back of the ship already commencing its power down routine. _That wasn’t here this morning,_ he thinks. _How were its controls not fried?_ But the thought is quickly pushed aside because really, there’s only one person it could be.

 

Is it too much to hope that she’s here, at last?

 

“Hullo,” comes a voice, sweet and tart with a hint of wariness. He shakes himself from his study of the starship, turns, and — there she is, Rey, a cautious smile gracing her pretty face, her brow furrowed with tentative hope. She's kicking at the dirt, standing not five meters from the hull of the _Supernovae_ , her hands tucked nervously into her leather belt.

 

“Come here,” he says, breathless. _When did he forget how to breathe?_

 

“Greedy,” she mumbles, but she moves into his open arms without hesitation.

 

He pulls her to him tightly, breathing in the smell of her: oil, and smoke, and the sea, and beneath all of that — the desert. Still there. _We don't get to kill the past, or erase it._

 

For a long time, they stay like that, just letting themselves experience their first real hug together.

 

And for a while, it's enough.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“If you're suggesting I eat pastebread when I had honest-to-entropy real food on Ahch-To, I am getting right back on my ship—”

 

Rey is teasing — or at least, he thinks she is. There's a cheerful light to her eyes, and that cautious smile has lingered even after they let go of each other.

 

“There's real food in here,” Ben assures her. “On the third level.”

 

Rey eyeballs the open turbolift doors with obvious distaste, shoving her head and shoulders inside the shaft so she can peer up the long narrow passage.

 

When she re-emerges, she sighs theatrically at him. “I really thought I was finished with this part of my life.”

 

“Want me to carry you?” he asks, then winces. _What a stupid suggestion, as though she couldn't do this herself, as though she didn't grow up doing it—_

 

“You know what?” she says, leaning one hip against the wall and raising an eyebrow at him. “I think I do, Ben Solo. Carry me.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

After he pulls them up to the third level — her slight weight slung across his back, her thin, strong arms draped across his clavicle, her breath hitting the sensitive skin behind his right ear in small puffs — she takes her time to thoroughly inspect the foodstuff supplies before settling on a breakfast of caf, sweesonberry rolls, and Domrai fruit.

 

There's a hangar on level three, smaller than those on the lower level and most likely dedicated to lifeboat storage. They sit at its edge, swinging their legs out into the dry morning air. The sunrises are not spectacular on Bedlam. The sun is distant; it never rises high in the sky, it sets quickly and it’s usually hidden by the turbulent, ever-changing clouds— so they watch as the dark mauve heavens merely lighten to a muted heliotrope.

 

Rey sips her caf, the side of her cheek rounded with the massive bite of the roll she's just taken. Squinting up at the clouds, she asks, “Does it ever storm here?”

 

Ben glances upwards, then shrugs. “No. The clouds build up, then evaporate. But nothing ever happens.”

 

“I'm here,” she counters. “Something has happened.”

 

He huffs, amused. She's finished her breakfast and he's taken about two bites, but he can’t stop looking at her.

 

“Good?” he asks, holding up his mug of caf.

 

“Good enough,” she replies. She grabs one of the Domrai, picking at the thick orange rind to get at the pulpy, red flesh within. The juice runs down her hands in bright crimson rivulets — _like Crait_ , he thinks — and she pops a wedge in her mouth.

 

“Can't believe the fruit is able to stay fresh,” she says, as she chews. “That's weird, isn't it?”

 

Ben shrugs. It _is_ weird, but he can't offer any explanations for this planet.

 

“Want some?”

 

“No,” he says. “Too bitter.”

 

“That's why I like it,” she mutters. “Nothing ever tasted this strong on Jakku. Everything was synth this and protein that. Fake flavors you could barely taste.”

 

He doesn't know what to say to that, so he takes the hand streaked with juice, and licks a broad stripe up her palm. For a split second, he worries that it's too much, too far — but Rey smiles, extending her fingers invitingly. He pulls each one into his mouth, tonguing at her slender, calloused digits until they're spit clean.

 

He lingers on her pointer and middle finger, holding them inside his mouth with his lips, his tongue caressing her knuckles as he wonders if she's ever touched herself with these fingers. His eyes are on hers, and Rey is staring at him with — is it lust? Is it too much to hope? It's definitely something — her eyes wide, her breathing shallow.

 

The moment draws on and on, stretched thin to its absolute breaking point, her fingers in his mouth and his eyes, unblinking, trained on hers, until at last he releases her hand. In a daze, she lowers it back to her lap.

 

“Mmm,” he hums, with as much indifference as he can. “Maybe bitter’s not so bad, after all.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Ben shows Rey the cave where he first slept after arriving on Bedlam, but they hear no voices. Still, she insists that she too feels something there.

 

“A presence,” she says, the only way she can explain it, her brow creased with incomprehension as she pokes around the cave like a hound searching for a lost scent.

 

“Exactly,” he tells her, relieved that he has not lost his mind.

 

 

. . .

 

 

They stumble back across the valley by glowlamp, and once they've climbed up into the _Supernovae_ , they linger awkwardly near the turbolift, their tense faces lit only by the halogen beam.

 

“So—” he begins, then stops. _Will she want to sleep with him, in the officer's quarters? In his sleeper? In his arms?_

 

“There are—I think I saw some barracks, for the troops, on the first level, right?” she asks. “I—I'll sleep there.”

 

He gapes at her, full of wonder, as she begins to clamber up the syntherope with ease, then he follows at a safe distance with the lamp. Maybe she doesn't want to sleep with him, maybe he hasn't earned that level of trust — but she will allow him to climb behind her, trusting him with this prime view of her shapely, legging-covered derrière and with catching her, should she slip.

 

 _It’s a start,_ he thinks.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Leia wanted me to tell you—” she says, over another shared breakfast.

 

“Don't,” he warns, but she barrels on.

 

“She loves you.”

 

Ben lets his head dip down, considers the bowl of boiled mealgrain in his hands.

 

“Yeah,” he says. _But that's not enough_ , he thinks. He knows Rey hears it, because she flinches, hard.

 

She lets it go, and changes the topic, regaling him with tales of the absurd territorial struggle between rival flocks of porgs that has broken out on the Rebellion's island in recent weeks. They don't discuss Leia again.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Rey is sleeping on a narrow cot, randomly selected from the long line of them within the troop barracks. She's curled up in the fetal position, synthcloth sheet pulled up to her nose, her bantha wool blanket wrapped tightly around her body.

 

And still, she can't seem to get comfortable. She's not cold, per se, but there is this aching consciousness of Ben — only two levels above her, so close and yet so oddly remote. There have been moments in the truncated days and nights — three of them, by her count — that have passed where she thinks she's certain of how much he wants her.

 

Her fingers in his mouth, his tongue running along each knuckle with precise attention — everything between her thighs throbs at the memory. But then, besides that and their initial hug and that first climb up through the _Supernovae_ 's turbolift, he's made no effort to touch her.

 

 _Almost as if he is afraid to_ , she muses. _Almost as if he's unsure if I want him to._

 

 _So, Rey_ , she says to herself _, what are you going to do? Are you going to fall into bed with this man who is so clearly troubled, so obviously in hiding from himself?_

 

She doesn't answer, but then, she doesn't have to. She's already up out of the sleeper, scurrying down the hall and up the turbolift shaft, past the empty officer's quarters to an unmarked door behind which she can sense him — sleeping, lightly, dreaming of something that has cast his energy into roiling shadow.

 

Rey supposes it would be polite to knock, but she doesn't bother. She simply places her hand on the door, willing it to open. Then she's sliding into his sleeper, the smell of him musky thick in the cocoon of his sheets, his bare torso warm and solid to the touch.

 

“Hnngh?” he asks, half-asleep and sprawled out, lying on his stomach.

 

“Hi,” she whispers, snaking a leg between his and wriggling under his outstretched arm, halfway beneath his relaxed body. She flings her other leg over his hip, resting her ankle against the back of his knee, and rolls her hips, pressing her sex up against his thick thigh. Kissing the sharp line of his jaw, she reaches up to run her fingers through his sleep-mussed hair.

 

“Rey?” This time, it's a more awake Ben asking the question, his eyes open wide and his full lips quivering, just slightly.

 

“I changed my mind,” she says, sliding her cheek along his firm, suddenly tense trapezius muscle. Then his arm is curling, pulling her in, dragging her body under his, settling himself between her thighs. It feels so right.

 

He feels so right.

 

“Rey,” he says again, and now there's no question to it. His mouth is on hers, their first kiss — in the lavender half-light of the Bedlam dawn. Rey doesn't think about how much she dislikes this planet, how dead it is and the unshakable suspicions she has about this ship and that cave — she throws herself into the kiss, instead. It's sweet, and cautious, and not enough, so it's Rey who nips at Ben's bottom lip. He huffs into her mouth in surprise, then opens to her, his tongue tentatively brushing hers.

 

 _This is enough_ , she thinks. _This could probably keep me going for a lifetime._

 

But then his hands are at the hem of her sleepshirt, and she's nodding enthusiastically.

 

When she's bare to him, and he to her — she kicks off his loose sleep pants with her feet as they're kissing — they spend what might be considered an awkward amount of time just taking each other in.

 

“Oh, Rey,” he says, and it's so tender, so full of pent-up emotion that she pulls him in for another kiss, her hands finishing the exploration her eyes began. She can feel him doing the same, his massive hands cupping her breasts. Each one fits perfectly in his palms.

 

“Ah.” She pants at the sensation, and then he ducks his head down to take a nipple in his mouth. The pressure is unreal, her clit is throbbing, her cunt in a state of messy, slick convulsion — just from this, just from his body rubbing against hers, his tongue in her mouth and then her breast in his.

 

“Ben, Ben. C'mon.”

 

She's not entirely sure what she's asking, but she trusts him, and they break away so he can take himself in hand — his cock is thick, stiff and dark red, almost angry-looking, and a bit hysterically, she wonders if that can even fit inside of her — and then they're both watching him rub the head, right where it is leaking, against her puffy, sopping folds. It's perfect, and she rocks her hips up towards him almost involuntarily, seeking more of that soft pleasure.

 

“Do it,” she breathes, and he nudges just the head inside, the stretch already taking her breath away. Skin to skin, his chest pressing down against hers, his face buried in the side of her neck and his arms crossed beneath her spine, one hand supporting her neck — he thrusts home, all at once.

 

It's painful.

 

Rey wails at the sharp pinch, at the burn of having so intimate an area of her body invaded so suddenly, by so unfamiliar and large an object. Ben's cock already feels like it's pushing her past her limits, like she's burning up from the inside out.

 

He releases her immediately, pulls out and rolls away, then sits up. “Rey?” he asks, panic pulling at his long face. “Rey, please, tell me—”

 

“Ow,” she huffs, quietly.

 

He leans over her, his eyes on hers. “I'm sorry,” he says, on the verge of tears. “I don't—”

 

But that's not how she wants this to go, not for them, so she takes his hand, and pulls it down towards her clit, guiding his fingers into a gentle circular pattern.

 

“It's okay, Ben, just—slow. Slowly. Like this.”

 

He follows instructions beautifully, and after a minute or two she releases his hand, letting him learn by intuition, humming into his mouth when she reclaims it for a kiss. He explores her, the fingers of one hand focusing on her clit while the others lightly trace her soft, sensitive flesh. She grunts at him when it doesn't quite feel right, and sighs when it does, and eventually, when he sinks one finger, then two inside of her, she's right at the brink of orgasm.

 

She feels him brush across her thoughts, pulling at the connection until he's listening to her internal monologue of _yes yes yes there yes no farther up yes yes oh Force yes to the right just a litt—that's it there oh yes_ , the pleasure making her toes curl and her legs kick and then she's coming, his mouth sealed tight around a nipple and three fingers deep inside of her, sloppily thumbing at her swollen clit.

 

It's so good, she feels like she's gone nova — like she's dissolved into pure light. After, her body is limp and pliant and she uses their connection — thankful there are no Jedi here to witness such a willful misuse of the Force bond — she uses their connection to urge him back over her, back inside.

 

“Are you sure?” he asks, all nerves and timid wanting.

 

“Now, Ben. Now. Please,” she whines, not entirely coherent but without any doubts that they _need_ to try this again, that it will be better this time.

 

He goes slowly, sinking into her seemingly one centimeter at a time. The stretch is still there, still foreign, but she's so relaxed, drenched from her own slick and ready for it now — as the wiry hairs at the base of his cock brush against her, she feels something new. A kind of pleasure her fingers have never quite delivered, deeper and more profound.

 

He rears back, and the exhilarating drag of her wet, swollen flesh against his searing, rigid cock is exactly what she’s always hoped it would be, every sensitive nerve ending he pushes on feeling like it's been set aflame.

 

Time seems to speed up after that. Ben keeps his thrusts minute, almost just pulsing against her, as if unwilling to stray too far.

 

Suddenly his arms are tight bands around her back, lifting her with him as he rears back onto his heels, sitting upright on the sleeper with Rey balanced on his lap. He mouths at her throat, rocking up into her. She curls her legs around his waist as best she can, feeling lazy, limp, split open wide by him and not really minding the sensation, her mind loosely curled around his.

 

 _Good good so good_ , he's thinking. _This just this forever your nipples Force don't go please don't leave—_

 

“I'm right here,” she slurs, rubbing her sweat-dampened cheek against his. “It's alright Ben, ‘m here.”

 

He comes for her then, leaving her privates a dripping mess that he cleans up with a damp towel he retrieves from the 'fresher some time later.

 

 _How is there water still running in this ship?_ she wants to ask — but she's already falling asleep in his arms, a gentle kiss against her temple and a huge, warm hand brushing up and down her back. The question doesn't seem so very pressing, anyway.

 

 

. . .

 

 

In the days that follow — five, by her count, and it is hard for her to believe that really only forty standard galactic hours have passed — Rey loses track of how many times she and Ben make love.

 

Dinner pushed aside, his body blanketing hers and her hands planted on the dusty hangar floor in front of her as they face the desolate greyscape of Bedlam, his hips slapping against her ass while she keens, the sound of it carried away on the planet's ceaseless winds.

 

In the ‘fresher, trusting him with her weight — he pins her to the wall so easily, makes her feel delicate when she wraps her arms around his neck and lets him do all the work, her orgasm sneaking up on her with his thumb on her clit and his tongue on her jugular.

 

During the short nights, rocking against each other in his sleeper, her leg slung over his hip and her head pillowed on his bicep, while he whispers things in her ear that make her blush.

 

She feels like a teenager, like she and Ben are stealing back the adolescence they were never afforded, rutting against every flat surface and some not-so-flat surfaces, promising each other impossible things and foregoing food, foregoing necessary conversations, foregoing rational decision-making in favor of sex.

 

It's as if they hang in suspended animation, harbored from reality inside a dream. And if there are creeping doubts at the edges of her mind: how much she dislikes it here, how loathe Ben seems to be to discuss leaving, or the war, or his mother — she sets them aside, and lets herself have this.

 

Until she can't.

 

The call comes as she and Ben lay in a panting heap in his sleeper, her head pillowed on his shoulder and their legs tangled. Her comlink, lying on his nightstand, lights up and begins to trill. Frowning, he reaches over and hands it to her.

 

The conversation that follows with Poe is terse and to the point — they're preparing to move from Ahch-To to a more permanent base, and they want her to return. She tells Poe she understands, says her goodbyes, and the comlink goes dark.

 

“Well,” she says, stealing a glance at Ben's face.

 

He won't look at her, his eyes are trained on the ceiling above their heads. His hand, which was tracing arcane designs into her hip, has gone still.

 

Rey sits up, dislodging his hand. She crawls over Ben's body, settling herself astride him. “Ben,” she murmurs, leaning down to brush her lips against his. “Come back with me. There's nothing _for_ you here. But—there's a place for you, in the galaxy. It's with the Rebellion. It's with _me_.”

 

He's blinking, far more rapidly than normal, and it takes a second for Rey to realize that he's trying not to cry in front of her.

 

“I can't,” he chokes, his voice breaking. “I can't.”

 

“But— _why_?”

 

“I don't—” He struggles to find the words, his broad chest heaving as he gasps in wet breaths. _I don't deserve it._

 

“Oh, Ben. You do. You _do_ , you can have this, you can have me and see your mother and—”

 

_“No!”_

 

Rey goes still. He's only shouted at her twice before, once in the forests of Takodana and once in Snoke's throne room, both times when he seemed to be on a razor's edge between kissing her and killing her. She sits up so she can inspect his face — there's no violence there, no anger. Just resignation.

 

“Stay,” he says, rocking his stiffening member against her sex. “Don't leave.”

 

Rey swallows down her panic, but it sticks in her throat, making it hard to breathe. “Ben, this is a dead planet. It's—and what? Return to being a scavenger, like I was on Jakku? Live the rest of my life in the corpse of a ship? Ben, _please_ —”

 

“With me. Live here with _me_.”

 

She sobs, the pressure where they're grinding against each other such a bittersweet contrast to the impossible thing he's asking of her. Unable to give him the answer he wants, she lifts up onto her knees and positions him at her entrance, then sinks down onto him. She's not fully ready, not as wet as she could be, and it's a little rough going. But Ben's fingers are there, kneading her clit, cupping her breasts, falling to her hips and helping her push herself up, then slide back down. In her mind, he showers her with a nonstop stream of praise, and adoration. He comes a hair’s breadth from telling her he loves her; she can feel that he wants to.

 

And then — something clicks, and it's good. Not just good, it's the best it's ever been. Rey leans over, catching Ben's mouth, their tongues dancing imprecisely for a moment before she heaves back up, plants her hands on his solid, wide pectorals and locks her elbows, gyrating against him and giving herself over to the rising tide of pleasure.

 

When they come, Ben first buried deep inside her and then Rey, after he kisses his way down her body to clean her up with his mouth, his tongue knowing exactly where she needs it after days of practice — they are both crying.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“I'll keep them away for as long as I can,” she tells him, as they loiter by her starhopper. “I don't know if anyone will come looking for you, but I'll try to buy you time, if they do.”

 

“Thank you,” he says, proud nose tucked against her shoulder, stooped so he can wrap his arms around her waist. Her fingers tap out some unknown melody against his ribs.

 

“Promise me that... that you'll pull your head out of your ass, and come rejoin the fight,” mutters Rey, sniffling. “And that you won't forget about me.”

 

“How could I forget about you?” he asks, a similar congested quality to his own voice. “You're all I ever think about.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

The minute she raises ship and exits Bedlam's atmosphere, she feels as if a huge weight has been lifted from her chest. But the relief at leaving the bleak, windswept wasteland is chased by guilt, at the thought of Ben staying there all by himself.

 

She tells herself her relief does not stem from leaving Ben — with his sorrow and his taciturn remorse and his refusal to talk about the future — only the planet. She repeats this mantra all the way back to Ahch-To.

 

 

. . .

 

 

After Rey goes, Ben starts a new tally on the wall of his adopted quarters. Beside the column of marks already made, he carves the words: _days since she has left_.

 

Eight hours later, he unearths himself from the covers, crawls out of his sleeper, and scratches a mark into the wall with his fingernail:

 

**_I_ **

 

 

. . .

 

 

Time pushes forward.

 

They still communicate through the bond, catching each other out of the blue with stray thoughts they would rather share with each other than anyone else (not that Ben has a wealth of options). The instances when this happens, however, begin to dwindle. Rey is busy, always busy. And there is so much of her life that does not contain Ben — meals shared with Finn and Rose and Jessika, important strategic meetings held with Leia and Poe, progress she is making with the sacred Jedi texts.

 

When they do speak, she forces herself not to recoil at the undercurrent of bitterness she senses from him. Perhaps _he_ senses all the things she cannot say, how carefully she filters the information she shares with him.

 

The miscommunications begin to pile up between them, their exchanges often ending in terse, clipped goodbyes, or simply dissolving into unresponsive silences.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“What do you think?” Poe asks.

 

Rey's heart is racing. _A pilot, for the Rebellion? Her?_

 

“You're a natural, Rey. One of the best I've ever seen. Something tells me I'll barely have to train you to fly the X-Wing. It's more a matter of getting you used to flying with a squadron.”

 

“Yes,” she says, joy licking at her stomach like a clement flame. Pride, too. She's important, she might someday be a proper Jedi, but independent of that, she still has a place here — a role to play. “I accept.”

 

Even as she says this, as Poe picks her up in a congratulatory hug then lugs her across their new base on Lamuir IV to tell the gang she's accepted, even as they celebrate late into the night, Rey knows that she is not going to share this news with Ben.

 

 _It would only hurt him_ , she tells herself, and the lie sounds so convincing, she almost falls for it.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Ben still hears the voices. They're — it's hard to describe, but the only word he can use to describe them is _whimsical_. They tease each other, they giggle and make guileless observations about his behavior. Sometimes, just as he's falling asleep, he thinks that they speak to him. He speaks to them, too, for lack of any other audience. He tells them the things he cannot tell another living soul — mostly about the unforgivable crimes he has committed. They never judge him; they have no concept of morality. It makes him feel better. Just a little.

 

One day, while he’s spelunking in a new cave system he’s found, Luke appears.

 

The cavern is cold, damp, with a pervasive dripping noise. Ben's breath appears as white puffs in the air. The darkness is pierced only by the concentrated beam of his glowlamp.

 

But Luke is truly a luminous being now; he emits his own light.

 

“Ben,” he says, and all the old indignation returns. There's censure in Luke's voice, like Ben is once more a moody teenager who has been misbehaving.

 

“Little busy.” He's in the middle of lowering himself from one chamber of the cave down a steep, craggy slope towards the one below — he needs to focus on not slipping and falling to an excruciating death.

 

“Ben, stop,” Luke implores, and the desperate edge to his voice moves Ben to listen. He freezes, turning his head to look at the glowing specter of his uncle.

 

“Stop—what, exactly?” he asks.

 

“Stop _hiding_. What did I tell you about Rey? Don't blow it, I said. What're you _doing_ here, Ben?”

 

“I'm doing the right thing, I'm sparing her all of—this,” Ben says, gesturing to himself.

 

“You're blowing it, kid.”

 

“Maybe, uncle,” Ben sighs, returning to his descent. “That's just my destiny.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

When Leia passes, it is not violent or painful. She simply goes in her sleep, taken away from them by natural causes and the passing of time.

 

Rey's reaction, her complete devastation at losing the closest thing to a mother she's ever had — this she cannot hide from Ben. She doesn't reach out to him, but as they stand witness at Leia's funeral pyre, the Alderaanian diaspora who have come from far and wide playing a mournful dirge, everyone holding onto each other as they all crack a little at the seams—

 

Ben is there, beside her. She can tell by his ashen face that he is gutted, that something is occurring to him for perhaps the first time — that the galaxy will not wait for him forever.

 

Rey nods at him blearily from where she is tucked under Finn's arm, and he nods back as though under a spell, far away and dazed. She closes her eyes, unable to witness his grief when she's drowning in her own, and when next she looks for him — Ben is gone.

 

 

. . .

 

 

 _Come back to me_ , he begs her that night, in a plaintive, hushed voice from parsecs away. _Just for a visit._

 

 _I can't right now_ , she tells him. _We're in transition, and I’m needed here._

 

 _Okay_ , he acquiesces, too readily, and the guilt hits her like a punch to the sternum.

 

 _Soon_ , she lies. _When things have calmed down._

 

 

. . .

 

 

The reasons she can't return to Bedlam keep coming: she's training to become a member of the Black Squadron, the Rebellion needs her, Finn and Rose are engaged, and then they're getting married, and then other friends are as well. And there are battles to be fought, and wounds to be mended. There's always more to be done.

 

She already knows the sad inescapable truth that Ben had to learn on the day of his mother's funeral, although she pretends that she’s forgotten it:

 

Time will not wait for her.

 

Even so, she does not return.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Ben is making headway with the voices. They have begun to speak to him directly in his waking hours, peppering him with an endless interrogation about the Force and the First Order and about Rey, who they speak of in reverent tones — _so pretty, so strong, and those noises she made in your sleeping chamber!_

 

They’re curious; he's fascinating to them. He hopes to leverage that interest into finding out just what exactly they _are_ , and then convince them to reveal themselves.

 

Ben understands now that time will not wait for him.

 

Even so, despite all that he has lost (or perhaps because of it), he does not try to find a way to leave.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Rey has never taken another lover, something her friends often joke about as her 'Jedi vow of chastity.'

 

It's been, what? She counts off the years in her head, as she lays in her bunk inside the Rebellion base. Three have passed, or thereabouts. She thinks about how wildly her heart used to beat when he would call to her, she thinks about the feel of him inside of her, his tear-stained face pressed against hers, she thinks about his simmering resentment towards her life here.

 

She thinks about taking Poe up on his offer of something casual, just physical.

 

She knows she won't, though. She could no more leave Ben behind like that than she can join him. She's just stuck here, in this role she has once again made for herself.

 

Waiting, waiting, waiting. So much has changed, and yet so little.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Ben rises one morning in his quarters and looks at the notches on the wall. He counts them, carefully, starting over several times when he thinks he may have messed up.

 

 _Four thousand, three hundred and eight marks._ He reels back from the wall as though stricken. _Has that much time really passed?_ It’s like he has been sleeping away entire years of his life without realizing it. One minute he landed on Bedlam, the next Rey appeared, and suddenly it is now, and four years, in eight-hour increments, have slipped through his fingers.

 

Ben climbs out of the _Supernovae_ , and observes the jagged mountains, the grey valley, his decomposing lifeboat, how oddly intact the _Supernovae_ still is.

 

 _I have spun the web in which I am caught_ , he thinks. _I will never leave this place._

 

“Is that so bad?” asks one of the voices, female.

 

“Yes,” he answers. Then after a moment, “No.” He doesn't know, really.

 

“Haven't we made this a wonderful place for you? Haven’t we protected you from the pulsar’s deadly gamma rays? Didn't we let the girl come see you, unharmed? Didn't we let her leave? Don't you have everything you could ever need, on the ship we brought here just for you?”

 

Ben cannot answer; the stark reality of what’s been in front of him this whole time leaves him speechless. Of course it’s been them, the spirits, all along. He wishes Rey were here. But then, that's nothing new, that's his default state of being — longing for her. Still, this is a sharper pang of need than usual.

 

And for once, the universe answers him. Or perhaps the spirits do. In any case, he feels her mind nudge gently at his.

 

 _I felt you_ , she tells him. _What's wrong?_

 

 _I've been here for four years._ The shock of it has not entirely worn off.

 

_Yeah._

 

_I'm going to die here._

 

 _What? You're dying?_ Rey’s mind pushes against his, frantic. _You need to get out of there. I always knew that place—_

 

 _No,_ he tells her. _I'm not dying. But I will some day, and it will be dirtside on this rock._

 

He feels her reaction in waves — indignation, then despair, finally a grim determination all her own.

 

 _I don't want you to._ It might have been petulant, this thought sent across the endless void of space to him, if not for the immeasurable sorrow that imbues it. _I want you to die here, with me, after we've grown old together and brought peace to the galaxy._

 

 _I'm sorry,_ he tells her, and he truly is. _I hope someday you can let me go._

 

Their connection goes silent, and still. Ben collapses to the leaden soil beneath his feet, buries his face in his hands and sobs. His cheeks are dry, he cries no tears, only suffers the chest-wracking convulsions of a man who has forfeited everything. He does not stop this tear-less, soundless crying until he becomes light-headed and dizzy. Then he stands up, gathers his supplies, and heads for the caves. There is nothing left for him but this, so he steels himself to push further down in his explorations.

 

 

. . .

 

 

It takes time for Rey to come to terms with Ben's proclamation, and she's still very busy, so it's not until about a week has passed that she can steal a day to herself. She treks into the forest of Lamuir IV and finds a quiet glen, where she can sit cross-legged in the soft heather and clear her mind.

 

Although their bond has always afforded them the ability to do what might kill another Force-sensitive being, like connect from across the galaxy, projecting herself is still a taxing enterprise.

 

When she’s done it, she breathes through the panic that rushes up at the sight of the drab, cinereal surface of Bedlam all around her. She's lucky; she's caught Ben just as he's returning from somewhere, his lanky frame — _he's lost weight_ , she notes, _and he’s got a beard now_ — weighed down with supplies.

 

“Have you been—climbing?” she asks, looking at the ascension gun hanging from his shoulder.

 

He starts, clearly surprised by her presence, and then his face softens. “Yes. The caves, I've discovered—”

 

“Ben,” she interrupts. “There’s no time for pleasantries. Don't do this. Please—please don't go this way.”

 

His smile is an odd thing, a little off-kilter, doleful. “You said that to me once before.”

 

“I meant it then, and I mean it now. Ben. I'm still _waiting_ for you.”

 

He sighs, then glances away. “I don't know if I'll ever be what you need me to be.”

 

Rey's heart is breaking, and he cannot even look at her. The effort of this projection is draining her, and she knows she does not have much time left. “Ben,” she tries again, but it comes out as a yelp.

 

That's all it takes, that audible expression of her pain. She's in his arms between one breath and the next, his large hands stroking her hair.

 

“There, there,” he soothes, leaning down to brush his nose against hers. “You'll be alright. You've got important work to do, and so have I.”

 

“No,” she whines. “No, _please_ , Ben.”

 

“Rey.” The finality in his tone — it's heavy enough to crush her, body and spirit.

 

“Do you think there's some version of ourselves, where we get this right?” she asks, voice wavering, her lips pressed against the corner of his mouth.

 

He pulls back a bit, to look at her. “What do you mean?”

 

“Another way we could’ve done it, where we got some sort of… happy ending. Could it be possible?”

 

“I—don’t know. I suppose.”

 

“If _we_ never happen, Ben, if you never leave this planet and this war never ends and we die on opposite ends of the galaxy—find me there.”

 

“...Find you?” He's staring at her, brows drawn together, as though he's working through a logic puzzle.

 

Rey leans up, burrowing into his embrace, her cheek against his so she can whisper in his ear, “In that life. Where I said all the right things, and you made all the right choices. And our love was enough. Find me, there. Even if it's just a dream. Find me. Promise?”

 

When he kisses her this time, Rey knows it is the last. Does it make the kiss better, knowing this? Perhaps. It is exquisite, as far as kisses go. Their time is almost up, she can feel how thoroughly depleted her body is, where it sits back on Lamuir IV. It won't be long before she must let go of this, if she wants to stay alive. And there are people waiting for her — people who need her. An entire galaxy full of them.

 

They break apart, for the last time, and Ben cradles her cheek in his large palm. His breathing is steady, but his eyes are sad, so sad, when he tells her, “Yes, Rey. I promise.”

 

It's not enough, but then, it was never going to be.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Ben has seen them in his dreams, where he has learned their names. So when he climbs down into the deepest cavern he has found in his years of expeditions, he calls out to the Bedlam Spirits in a voice far more confident than how he really feels.

 

 _It doesn't matter,_ he reminds himself. _It's been long enough, a_ _lmost five years to the day. It's time._

 

“Tilotny! Splendid Ap! Horliss-Horliss! Cold Danda Sine! I know you're there, I know you can hear me. Show yourselves!” The words are booming in the subterranean silence, and they bounce between the dark damp rock walls that loom high above his head until they fold back in on him.

 

They appear before Ben — a luminous green lady, a pink conical monolith that towers above his head, a shimmering purple-blue nebula, a hovering black mask graced with glowing orange features. They are comical, or at least, they would be — if Ben were not all too aware of their abilities.

 

“I've stayed too long in this place. It has crushed me. I've ruined—it’s all wrong. Please… help me.”

 

At last, Ben has remembered how easy it is to admit defeat — to ask for help. How easily it trips off his tongue, now that he _truly_ knows what it means to lose everything, now that he has been pulverized by the enormity of his mistakes.

 

Tilotny tilts her head, her long emerald hair flowing down past her knees as she considers him. Horliss-Horliss snarks, in as much as an amorphous indigo haze can snark, “Your uncle warned you about this once. He told you— _live with your regret_. That's what your precious Force is all about, isn't it?”

 

“Don't listen to him. I want you to stay with us,” Cold Danda Sine adds, its orange brows lifted hopefully. “I like you. We can teach you everything we know. We can show you the answers you've been seeking, in the caves. You can be like us!”

 

Tilotny — the unspoken leader of their strange little coven — nods her head in silent approval.

 

Ben ponders it. He thinks about Rey first, of course. About the way her small breasts swayed when she was seated astride him, the way she savagely attacks whatever meal is set in front of her, how she has never given up hope on him. He thinks of the first time they talked, just as normal friends might — about the happabores and the Chandrilan bulabirds. He thinks about her sparkling laughter, and about the dreams she has for herself, and about every kriffing thing she deserves.

 

He thinks of his mother, who died still keeping the hope alive even though she lost everyone she'd ever loved in the process. He thinks of her heart, once transmogrified by the childish Horliss-Horliss into a literal diamond but later compressed by decades of sorrow and loss until it was — in essence — just as strong and hard and beautiful. Diamantine: a shining, distant beacon like the Bedlam pulsar.

 

He thinks of his father, who gave his life so Ben might take back his own; of Snoke, who demanded so much of Ben; of Luke, who spent the latter half of _his_ life hiding in shame because of Ben. All three — lives that he has taken.

 

He thinks of an unmarked door, a bitter fruit dripping blood-red juice, a clenched fist, a cautious smile.

 

His thoughts come back to Rey. She had a few more lines on her face when she came to him, for the last time. Laugh lines, but also wrinkles around her eyes. Dark shadows underneath, the kind that come from gnawing regret. Maybe if there is nothing left for her to hope for — if he is a shapeless master of time and space — she will learn to stop waiting.

 

Maybe _he_ will learn how to rewrite this story — how to do this all again, and do it _right_ this time.

 

“Yes,” Ben says, to the spirits of Bedlam. “I will stay. Teach me. Teach me everything.”


	3. white dwarf

******“White dwarfs are thought to be the final evolutionary state of stars... A close binary system of two white dwarfs can radiate energy in the form of gravitational waves, causing their mutual orbit to steadily shrink until the stars merge.”**

 

He stares out the _Supernovae_ ’s transparisteel viewport of his quarters, looking at but not truly seeing the inky, star-encrusted mantle of space.

 

“Careful you don't get lost out there.” The teasing, lilting voice comes from somewhere behind him. When he turns back towards his sterile sleeping chamber, she’s there.

 

Rey.

 

“Hi there, Supreme Leader, here for our weekly check-in,” she jokes, hazel eyes shining in the low light.

 

As always, Ben gives her a cautious smile. As always, he waits on tenterhooks, unsure if she'll return it.

 

She does. He wants to trace the sweet dimple that appears in her left cheek with his thumb, but instead he simply exhales and lets his body relax. Just a slight loosening of his stance — he hopes she doesn’t notice, but suspects she’ll sense his relief either way.

 

He draws closer to where she has appeared. They don't often attempt to touch unless Ben is passing her something, and even then it's no more than a brushing of fingers. Still, he’s close enough to be able to smell her — the forest, sticky pine sap and clean air — a hint of wherever the New Alliance is stationed these days. For all the trust they've built, she still won't tell him that.

 

But it's alright, it's enough that she's here. _The trust will come_ , he tells himself, for the umpteenth time.

 

“Rey,” he says at last, when he realizes he's been staring at her like a kriffing mudlicker for the past several minutes. Oddly, she doesn't seem perturbed. In fact, she seems fully at ease, one leg crossed over the other, her hands planted flat on the writing desk behind her. She's grinning, and she looks almost —  _content_.

 

“You with me today, Ben? You seem a little spacey,” she says, glancing up at him from beneath her eyelashes.

 

“Yes, it's... good to see you. It's been a long week.”

 

“So—you've got news then?” Rey asks, steering them back towards business.

 

“News,” he echoes. “Yes. News. Nothing on the systems and droid operations—they're almost ready. As are the shadowfeeds. But I've received a report from Hux—rumors of a Rebel base in the Kuras system. I told them the likelihood of the New Alliance’s High Command setting up in someplace that difficult to travel to and from was unlikely, but—”

 

Ben pauses. Rey's face has gone pale, drawn tight. “But?”

 

He shakes his head. “I cannot refuse to follow that tip. We're sending a squadron to check. Nothing subterranean, RM-2020 droids will run a few dirtside inspections. Mostly radar and sonar evaluation from the stratosphere.”

 

She gives him a wan smile. “I'll pass that information along to General Organa. Who—sends her best, by the way.”

 

Ben sighs, and glances away from her, suddenly fascinated with the rivets fixing a nearby shelf to the duralloy bulkhead. _I should not be standing so close to you_ , he thinks, but he doesn’t move away.

 

She pushes herself off his desk, and takes a short, halting step towards him. He watches her, tensed and ready to — what? _Run away_ , his mind suggests. But Ben doesn't.

 

When Rey is in front of him, almost standing on his toes, she reaches up and brushes her palm across his unscarred cheek, her thumb tracing the line of his cheekbone. It's wonderful, and he has to hold himself back from rubbing his face against her hand like a stray tooka-cat in need of affection.

 

“You’re doing the right thing,” she says. There's enough time left for her to give him one more tight smile — they're both feeling the strain from their joint effort to bring her projection to him. “I’ll see you soon, Ben.”

 

And then she's gone. But she's not _really_ ever gone, not to him.

 

It took less than six months after the Battle of Crait for Kylo Ren to reach out to Rey — to beg her for her help, and her forgiveness. And she'd given it, in time, after many long nights spent 'spilling their guts', as she'd called it.

 

Every time she leaves, the smell of her — fir tree needles, hydraulics oil, caf, and underneath it, something sweet, like citrus — lingers, a heady perfume. And whenever she touches him, even just the tips of her fingers glancing his, he feels it like a brand for days afterwards. Her words ring in his head; a bell, tolling again and again just for him. And he sees her all around his quarters — even now, there she still is: leaning against his desk, and there, sitting in his chair, and there, from his memory of the one time she was exhausted after a day of flight training, she lies sprawled across his sleeper.

 

Rey has always called him Ben, ever since Ahch-To, even after she’d accepted the sins he's committed while calling himself Kylo. And like a prophecy fulfilled, in the time that they've shared this secret _thing_ between them, he's begun to think of himself as Ben. Rey calls him Ben, and he _wants_ to be Ben.

 

He _wants_ to be Ben, so in his heart, he _is_ Ben.

 

This is how Supreme Leader Kylo Ren has already died.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Ben is standing on the command deck of the  _Mandatore IV_ -class Siege Dreadnought _Supernovae_. Although General Hux chides him regularly about the dangers of making himself so visible to the crew, since his ascension he has refused to become the kind of leader Snoke was, hiding himself away in dark moldering fortresses or garish throne rooms.

 

 _No_ , Ben figures, _better to see the threat coming your way with your own eyes_. Know thine enemy.

 

For example: the First Order’s weakness, he’s observed, is the same problem that historians say plagued the Empire before its downfall — in the past five years, they’ve grown too big. It’s all too easy, when your ranks have swollen past the quadrillions, for people to slip through the cracks.

 

People like, say, a duplicitous codebreaker who will always choose himself and his own best interests over any other prevailing ideology.

 

He’d only heard about FN-2187 and his accomplices’ attempted infiltration of the _Supremacy_ in the aftermath of the events on Crait, but the idea had appealed to Ben: hire the man who slipped through the _Supremacy_ ’s shields and got the Resistance fighters into the chamber holding the hyperspace tracker.

 

An idea, once rooted, he could not shake. An idea that Rey approved of, hesitantly.

 

DJ had been resistant at first, when Ben sat down across the table from him in the back of a seedy little cantina in an old shadowport somewhere along the Western Reaches. But it hadn’t taken more than a vague threat against his livelihood (the First Order’s reach is very long, after all) and a demonstration of Ben’s _abilities_ to convince DJ to find someone who could write a few helpful viruses for him. The slicer and his colleague have been paid handsomely for their trouble, in any case. Ben is banking on their full pockets and DJ’s animosity towards both sides of the war in keeping both of his co-conspirators' mouths shut.

 

Thus, Ben waits.

 

He waits for quiet, unobserved moments during the routine inspections he’s been conducting on the many starships in the First Order’s armada, when he can slice one of the viruses written for him into the command decks’ nav computers. When he can visit the droid production and maintenance facilities, claiming a need to study their command controls. When he can send encrypted anti-First Order shadowfeeds to DJ, who in turn broadcasts them across HoloNet backchannels (which Ben _knows_ are being secretly watched, even on this very ship).

 

Ben has often thought that the subterfuge may be overdoing it. He’s the Supreme Leader, for edge’s sake. He can do as he pleases. Still, he supposes there is a grain of selfishness at the heart of all these cloak-and-dagger machinations: he doesn’t want anything to happen until the exact moment that it’s supposed to. Which is to say, the moment he’s _ready_.

 

Renewing his vigil for the sign, Ben sees it — just a momentary flicker of white static rippling across the _Supernovae_ ’s holoprojected astrogation charts. This is how he knows he’s successfully installed the last virus on the last ship in the fleet. Which means everything is ready.

 

When the time comes, he’ll set all the traps he’s been laying. And when he does, every First Order Star Destroyer and Dreadnought and _Dreadnaught_ -class heavy cruiser and frigate and any other kind of warship will become a sitting duck, hulking but useless — devoid of its navigational system. Every droid will freeze where it stands, its system overrun by a code that will ultimately tax its cognitive matrix to the point of meltdown. And if the shadowfeeds have done their job, the seeds of dissension will be planted deeply enough in the minds of the lower-ranking soldiers and civilian personnel that — faced with the First Order’s rapid descent into chaos — they’ll flee like rats on a sinking ship.

 

 _When the time comes_ , Ben tells himself. He looks around at the people — his people — tending to ship maintenance, charting their trajectory through the stars, living their lives.

 

 _We’ll all be free. Whatever that means,_ he muses.

 

That time, he knows, is almost here.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Can I ask you a question?” Rey requests, the following week. She’s dressed in her usual flowy tunic, belted high at her waist, with practical breeches and boots, all in a light shade of sandstone. Her brown hair has grown long, and she wears it plaited loosely in a braid that snakes its way over one shoulder and down her breast. She reminds Ben, even after all these years, of a delicate bloom shrouded in desert tones.

 

“Anything.” He mirrors her casual lean from across his sitting room, posted up against a duralloy wall and watching her as she scrolls through the contents of the datapad he’s left on the sideboard for her.

 

“Okay.” She pulls the saber from beneath the trailing ends of her top, and studies it for a moment. “The Twin Suns. I’ve been reading about it in the sacred texts, but—I don’t understand. Is it a—war game?”

 

“Of a sorts. It’s a sparring exercise,” he tells her. “Using the Force to leap and strike a harmless blow at your opponent. Controlled combat.”

 

“What’s the _point_ of it, though?”

 

“To practice. Demonstrate your mastery. To show off, really.”

 

“Oh.” She puckers her lips in consideration. “Sounds indulgent. And kind of—”

 

He raises an eyebrow at her. “Fun?”

 

“Yeah.” She’s chuckling, at him or herself he’s not certain. “We should try it, some time. When we’re in the same sector, or who knows, maybe even on the same planet.”

 

“Ever the optimist,” he says, under his breath.

 

Rey rolls her eyes at him, then crosses the room until she is, once again, almost touching him. If she were _really_ here, in the room with him, they’d be breathing the same air.

 

“You are _going_ to make it out of here, and we _will_ see each other again. Not like this. For real, Ben.”

 

“Yes.” A knee-jerk response, given automatically because he knows how important hope is to Rey, and he cannot bear the thought of being the one to take it from her. He’s studying the saber clipped to her belt, and when her hand brushes his, he almost thinks it’s an accident. But she slots her fingers between his and twists so their hands are entwined, and then she tugs.

 

“Ben.”

 

He cannot look up. Ben knows if he looks at her, Rey’s face will be turned up towards him, and whatever he sees there, it will answer this terrible question that has been lodged in the back of his throat for years. _Could you ever love me as I love you?_ No. No, he does not need to know and he will _not_ look at her. It’s enough that she’s taken his hand, that he can feel the callouses on the pads of her fingers from a lifetime of fighting and climbing and surviving. Just this, it’s enough.

 

_“Ben.”_

 

He looks up. He _has_ to, because she’s asked it of him. It’s there, by all of Alderaan’s ghosts, it’s all right there on her soft face. She smiles at him, a shy and gentle thing. They’re already straining to keep her here, planted in this room, but he pushes harder and her feelings unfurl within him like a nightblossom stirring in the first rays of moonlight.

 

“Oh,” he says, stupidly.

 

“Do you get it?” _You have to survive this. You know why._

 

It’s not spoken aloud, but the words are there — in his mind, in her voice — just the same.

 

“Please. Out loud,” he begs, because what has he got to lose now? Except everything? _Might I have this?_

 

“I love you,” she breathes, her body sinking into his, her fingers still wrapped around his own. “And I want you to stop—you’ve been fighting long enough. You’ve done the right thing. Now it’s time.” _We’re on Reamma, in an old Alliance base._ “Come _home_.”

 

“I—” The equivocation is right there, on the tip of his tongue, but Rey shoots him a sharp glance, full of warning.

 

“Soon,” he says instead, in a hushed voice. He doubles over until his face is tucked into the curve of her slender neck. Ben can’t stand the idea of kissing this approximation of her, not for the first time, but his free hand comes up to tangle in her hair, and he opens his mouth — tentative, just a taste, a swipe of his tongue against the thin skin under her jaw.

 

“Soon,” he repeats. His eyes slip shut as her other hand rises to the nape of his neck, where her short nails scratch lightly against his scalp. He breathes her in, listens to her heart racing just as quickly as his own.

 

For now, it’s enough.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Hux’s face is unbearably smug when he places the diary in Ben’s hands, then takes his seat at the table of Admirals and Generals who constitute the First Order’s High Command.

 

“The Sun Crusher,” he says. “An incomparably elegant weapon; created by Tarkin, continued by Daala, and finished by the brilliant Qwi Xux. Practically invincible, due to its quantum-crystalline armor, and capable of annihilating entire star systems before it was so _thoughtlessly_ destroyed by Han Solo and his associates. This diary was found in an abandoned asteroid base at the far reaches of the Maw Cluster. It belonged to Qwi Xux, and it contains all the necessary schematics to rebuild the weapon.” He sits down, gloating, and awaits his due praise from the Supreme Leader.

 

Ben feels as though his veins have frozen over, limbs pinned to his chair like the wings of an Endor Blue to an entomologist’s board. The High Command is nodding at Hux, impressed with his discovery. The diary sits before him — it is made of paper, a rare commodity in this day and age. He reaches out, brushes the tips of his fingers across the spine, and watches as flakes of it crumble and drift away.

 

The time has come, Ben realizes. This is a sign, he is sure of it, and if it is ignored — he may not receive another.

 

He stands, gathering the Force around himself like a cloak, and focuses on the diary. Electric judgement, crackling green strands of energy, spark between his fingers. He flicks one hand, and instantly — the diary is engulfed in flames.

 

“Are there other copies?” He looks to Hux, whose jaw has dropped and whose bulging, shocked eyes remain fixed on the smoldering pile of cinders on the table. _“Hux.”_

 

 _Fine, we’ll do this my way._ When he probes Hux’s mind, he digs in deep. It isn’t pretty. He almost loses himself to the seductive songs of jealousy and rage screaming out at him, but he redoubles his effort, reliving the last several weeks of Hux’s life in the span of an instant.

 

There is only one copy of the diary, and it has been stored in the datacard that rests in Hux’s breast pocket. With a tug from Ben, it flies through the air and into his hand.

 

“I won’t kill you,” he says, backing away from the table. “A quick death is too good for any of you.” He’s tempted to say more, but some of them have already unholstered their blaster pistols, are taking aim—

 

Ben takes two steps backwards through the meeting chamber’s pneumatic doors, hand extended to stop the plasma projectiles being shot his way. His last view of the First Order’s leaders —  including Hux’s anaemic, screaming face — is of them rushing forward, shooting fruitlessly. Then the doors close in front of him. He is alone in a lacquered black corridor of the _Supernovae_.

 

Mechu macture, never a skill Ben cared much about, comes in handy at a time like this. He presses his fingers to the door’s control panel, and channels a purple stream of ions through the wires until they begin to glow within the wall. When he’s finished, he takes a step back, and spends a long minute staring at the unmarked, gleaming doors. They will not open again. They will have to be burned away to release the men now trapped inside.

 

_I cannot kill the past, but I can leave some of it here, in this room. With you wretched souls._

 

And he does.

 

Ben executes the virus sequences with a few swift strokes across the screen of the datapad in his quarters. Within minutes, life aboard the _Supernovae_ is thrown into disarray. Even as he strides through the halls towards the central hangar bay, where his shuttle sits waiting for him, he can see the precarious house of cards the First Order has built — founded on the idea that their tech is the best tech, that everyone on this ship believes in the mission, that they could never fail as the Empire did — it’s already beginning to collapse.

 

 _The ships have stopped flying,_ people whisper frantically. _Why are the droids not operating? What the brix is going on?_

 

He makes a clean break in the panic, burying his presence and using the Force to dull the minds of those who still manage to see him.

 

His _Upsilon_ -class shuttle really should have five pilots operating it for optimal efficiency. But Ben does not have four collaborators, and he’s a _very_ good pilot. What he lacks in extra bodies, he makes up for in skills and luck. There is such pandemonium by the time he raises the ship up off the hangar floor, navigating it out into the void of space, that there is only a desultory, slapdash attempt to stop him.

 

He doesn’t shoot back. In fact, he doesn’t kill a single soul on his way out.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Rey feels it in waves: first his panic, then his anger, and finally, his wild exhilaration. It’s so clear to her; his emotions resonate in her as though they were produced from her own soul.

 

 _Where are you?_ she demands.

 

 _I’m on my way_ , he tells her. That’s all it takes. She’s up out of her seat at the table in the common room, where she’s been losing miserably to Finn at sabacc for the past two hours. He shakes his head in confusion, gaping at her as she stumbles away.

 

“You guys hear about the First Order’s fleet? Something about—” Rose says, appearing in the doorway, but Rey is already brushing past her, sprinting down the ferrocrete corridor, out through the hangar bay, into the thick woodlands that surround their base, LX-Robynsun V.

 

 _Can you see the place I’m headed for? Come to me, and land there_ , she directs, cutting through the trees, conjuring a mental image of the quiet glen she found a few years back, where she often retreats to meditate and train without the prying eyes of the New Alliance or her students.

 

When she gets there, she can already see it — the sleek black underbelly of his shuttle, sluicing downwards through the clouds, stabilizing, lowering itself towards the treetops, then onto the soft grass. The ship settles and seconds later its ramp is lowered, jets of steam issuing forth.

 

And there he is. He looks so similar to how he did on the _Supremacy_ — a hulking tower of a man, his face still clean-shaved and the puckered line of his scar, like a crack in a china plate, bisecting his right cheek. His hair is a bit longer though; it brushes his shoulders, and there are scant traces of grey coming in at his temples.

 

It’s been a long five years.

 

“Ben!” she cries, flinging herself into his arms before she can think better of it, because he’s _here_. Finally. All this time, there has been some small secret demon living inside of Rey, whispering to her that Ben would never leave, that they would never really get to have this.

 

His arms, burly and unyielding as they wrap themselves around her back, hoist her upwards. She’s locked in his embrace, and he’s spinning her, his proud nose buried in her shoulder, his body hard against hers.

 

Her _real_ body, and his as well.

 

“Hello,” he whispers, voice thick, breath fanning across her breastbone, right before he pulls his head back so he can stare adoringly up into her face.

 

“Hi,” she says, her hands flitting along his hard biceps for a moment before sliding up into his hair. “I’m going to kiss you now, Benjamin Solo.”

 

“ _Finally_ ,” he teases, and Rey doesn’t have time to sass him for it, because there has never been a truer sentiment vocalized, and her lips are already on his. Their first kiss is clumsy, like two baby birds blindly pecking at each other, but Ben tilts his head a bit and Rey returns her hands to his broad shoulders so she can steady herself and then — there it is, their lips moving in some kind of perfect synchronicity, like all of this was destined to happen.

 

She slips her tongue out, poking at the corner of his mouth, and he chuckles, opens for her. It’s a little strange at first, the sensation of their tongues sliding together, wet muscle against muscle while his full lips pull at hers, but then he moans and lets her back down to the ground so he can hunch over her. When he starts rocking his hips against her belly, his massive hands engulfing her bottom and pulling her closer, Rey thinks:  _this is the most perfect thing humanity has ever created. The kiss, our crowning achievement._

 

“Alright, hands up.”

 

For one harrowing second, Ben tenses and growls into her mouth. Rey feels a spike of panic, his and hers, and wonders if this will all be over before it even began—

 

 _No. Not this time_ , he reassures her, his voice calm in her mind. He pushes her behind him, brushing his cloak out over his extended arm so that Rey can barely see the interloper.

 

“Don’t move. We’ve got you surrounded.” It’s Poe’s voice. She peeks out over Ben’s arm. Commander Dameron is standing at the edge of the glen, holding a heavy A-280 rifle. It’s aimed directly at Ben’s heart.

 

 _You could stop the blast_ , she tells him. _We could run for the ship._ They _are_ surrounded, she can hear the crunching of twigs behind her, and when she glances to either side she can see armed soldiers — her friends, some of them — with their blasters lifted, all pointed at them. _We could make it._

 

 _No more running, Rey._ Then his hands are in the air.

 

“I surrender,” he says, completely calm.

 

“Take this,” Poe directs, handing his rifle to the Lieutenant on his right. He walks to Ben, and silently, Rey prays for him to please _not_ do anything stupid—

 

He hits Ben, and it’s with no small amount of force — a bruising uppercut to the right side of Ben’s jaw. His head snaps back. She can _hear_ the dull crack of it, ringing out in the tranquil morning.

 

“That’s for the _Raddus_ , and for Crait, and for all the bantha shit you've pulled since then,” Poe says, before tearing the lightsaber from Ben’s belt. Ben’s arms remain hoisted in the air; he makes no protest and offers no retaliation for Poe’s sucker punch.

 

“Cuff him and take him inside,” he directs, to one of the soldiers. Rey is ready to protest, but Ben’s hand reaches back for her arm. He squeezes gently. _It’s okay._   _Let them._

 

“And her?” the woman asks, jerking her head towards Rey.

 

Poe snorts. “I’ll deal with it.”

 

Once the stun cuffs are secured around Ben’s wrists and he’s being marched back towards the base, with one final reassuring smile thrown over his shoulder at Rey, Poe shifts his focus to her.

 

“Him, Rey, _really_? How long?” he asks.

 

“Probably too long to explain while we stand around here like a bunch of moof milkers,” she mumbles.

 

Poe sucks at his teeth, lips pursed, while he considers that.

 

“Alright,” he says, voice dripping sarcasm. “You can explain to the General _and_ me at the same time, back at the base. Hope it’s a _real_ good story, Rey. I, for one, can’t kriffing wait to hear it.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

The New Alliance’s High Command has arranged themselves as a tribunal, seated at a long table in front of him. Most of its members glare at him with unveiled contempt etched across their wary faces.

 

Leia sits front and center. She is impassive; only her eyes —  just like Ben’s, large, dark, incurably expressive — give a hint towards the anguish he senses inside her.

 

 _How strange_ , Ben thinks, _that my mother should be among the voices who will decide my fate._ He rubs at the aching bruise on his jaw, and sighs. He supposes if his life is to be taken, who better to do it than the one who granted it to him?

 

The interrogation begins. He hands over the plans for the Sun Crusher, promises them any information they want. They go over with him —  in painstaking detail — the First Order rank and file, specifications of their fleet, which planets have been supplying them with what. They have hours worth of questions, and Ben answers every single one.

 

He tries not to look at Rey, whose presence he can feel at the back of the room. She’s too full of hope — she wears it like shining armor. It’s dazzling, and what Ben needs right now is to stay focused.

 

When they’re satisfied with his answers, the tribunal tells him they’re going to speak with Rey. After, they say, they’ll take a vote on whether he lives or dies. They send him to the brig.

 

And so, once more, he waits.

 

 

. . .

 

 

_There’s still time for us to go. We could open your cell, walk you out, fly off into Wild Space._

 

Ben sighs, reclining against the rusted cot, the sole furnishing in his otherwise featureless ferrocrete cell, lit by a flickering glowplate that dangles from the ceiling.

 

_And then what, Rey? Could you really live with yourself, if you walked away from your people? From your place here? Do you think I could live with myself, if I asked you to?_

 

He senses her hesitation.

 

 _I love you_ , she tells him, from so close — just on the other side of the thick durasteel door. _I want you, and I want to fight for the New Alliance. I’m greedy that way, I suppose._

 

 _You deserve to be. Promise me you’ll hold onto hope, just a little while longer._ He tries to be strong, tries to send a sense of confidence her way.

 

 _I promise,_ she sighs.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“We have decided,” Leia starts, once they’ve reconvened the next day, “that we’re not going to decide yet.”

 

 _I laid on that awful slab all night for this?_ he fumes. But Ben remains silent.

 

“You’re on probation, essentially,” adds Major Ematt.

 

 _This is good_ , Rey assures him, from her resumed position in the chamber’s shadows.

 

“We appreciate the things you’ve done to cripple the First Order, but we have no doubt of their ability to recover in time. If you join the New Alliance, and aid us in turning the tide of this war, we’re prepared to offer you a full pardon — once the Republic has been restored,” Leia says, her eyes shining. Her fists lay on the table in front of her, clad in sable leather gloves and tightly clenched, shaking almost imperceptibly. Beside her, Poe’s dark gaze is piercing and inscrutable, although his posture suggests indifference, his legs sprawled haphazardly under the table.

 

“Do you accept your probation, Kylo Ren? Will you help us win this war?” she prompts.

 

He stares back at them, unspeaking _. Does it even matter if I do? I was prisoner then, I’m prisoner now. Both times I have chosen this, permitted and even invited my own subjugation._

 

 _It’s different now,_ Rey counters, intruding on his thoughts — a stray sunbeam slicing through the mire.

 

 _How?_ He shifts in his chair so he can look back at her, no longer bothering to hide the fact that he and Rey are wordlessly communicating.

 

She’s staring at him. Her eyes are clear, and her face is relaxed. Open. Trusting. _Now you have love. My love._

 

Ben shifts back in his seat so he is once more facing the tribunal.

 

“I accept,” he tells his mother and her Generals.

 

 

. . .

 

 

When they enter the mess hall side by side, his hand resting on the small of her back, he can feel Rey’s apprehension. She’s worried about her friends — the only ones she’s ever had — and their reaction to this fragile thing between her and Ben. _He_ couldn’t care less what they think, but when her anxiety begins screeching like the whistle of a tea-kettle, he knows exactly how the scene will play out.

 

It’s obvious, when he looks around the table. The mechanic, the pilots, the traitor — they’re all glowering at him, their faces a bouquet of dark storm clouds.

 

He cuts it off at the pass.

 

“I must speak with the General,” he says, nodding stiffly at Rey. He pivots on his heel and marches away with whatever dignity he can manage, and if he catches relief splashed across the love of his life’s face, he wills himself not to react in front of her friends.

 

Even Benjamin Solo, infamous turncoat and intergalactic butt of the joke, has limits to what he can endure for this woman.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“He could’ve stayed,” Rose says, subdued.

 

Rey fidgets, standing where Ben left her, neither able to follow him nor able — in good conscience — to sit down and pretend that what has just transpired is _okay_.

 

“Could he have, though?” she asks, mouth twisting slightly.

 

“Rey—” Poe starts, but Finn interrupts:

 

“These things take time, Rey. We’re all gonna need it. Yesterday he was the _Supreme Leader_ of the First kriffing Order.”

 

She shrugs, worrying at her bottom lip. “Right. Of course. Let me know when you’re ready. In the meantime, I’ll be sticking with the man who swallowed his pride and left everything he had behind so he could help us.”

 

She can’t follow Ben — she has this feeling he’d see it as pity. But she can’t just stand here like a blinking moron, hovering beside the table in the vague, untenable hope that her friends will suddenly approve of her traitorous —  what? Informant? Friend?

 

Boyfriend?

 

So Rey takes the only other course of action available to her. She turns and tucks tail, and although she hears them calling after her, she doesn’t stop or look back. After she’s done crying her eyes out in her bunk, she devours two protein cubes in under a minute and spends the rest of the day hidden inside the _Millennium Falcon_ , repairing its banged up shield projectors.

 

There _is_ still a war on, after all.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Ben, on the other hand, picks at his meal in his mother’s quarters, where they sit in fraught silence.

 

Despite everything that has passed, Leia is still his mother, and in the end, she cannot help herself when she senses his distress.

 

“Y’know, you could just—”

 

“I’m aware,” he says, between clenched teeth. “Of what I could and could not do. _Mother_.”

 

“I’m just trying to help. _Son_ ,” she snaps.

 

The guilt is like a hot poker between his ribs. _Is this my life now? A debased parade of shame and apologies, from here to my grave?_

 

She tries again. “It’s clear to anyone with eyes that you love each other, but Rey—well, she’s got the same handicap as you.”

 

He pushes his noodle stew around the bowl with his spoon. “Which is?”

 

“Not much in the way of healthy role models when it comes to love, I’m afraid,” she drawls.

 

“That’s not the—”

 

“It’s alright, Ben, we both know it’s true. Just try and learn something from your parents’ mistakes, hm?”

 

Ben forsakes the stew, and gives Leia his full attention. If she can be kind to him, after everything, he can reciprocate. “I’ll try, mom.”

 

“That’s my boy.” Her hand lands on his, warm and soft. She gives it a little pat, and the gesture is so maternal, so compassionate... Ben turns his head so she will not see him blink back his tears. She does, anyway.

 

“Ah,” she says, softer now. “ _That’s_ my boy.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

They’re back in the clearing, only this time sans handcuffs and armed soldiers. They sit facing each other — cross legged, spines straight, eyes closed. The early morning sun cuts through the canopy in soft shafts of golden light, making the dew on the grass sparkle. Everything feels fresh, and new, and full of possibility.

 

“I can’t remember the last time I did this,” he tells her, and there is a hint of wistfulness in his voice that suggests that maybe he can, but _wishes_ he did not.

 

“It doesn’t usually involved speaking.” They’ve come here every morning since Ben has returned, and somehow, he always manages to distract them from their supposed purpose.

 

Rey cracks one eye open. He’s not even trying. His eyes are like aged amber in the light, and he’s not meditating — he’s just staring at her. Rey blushes, from nervousness. Or excitement. Maybe both.

 

“Maybe you should shut me up,” he says, his deep voice hushed.

 

“The things I do for love,” she sighs, crawling into his lap. His hands are on her waist, steadying her as she settles, her folded legs bracketing his hips. When they kiss, it is just as profoundly overwhelming as it was the first time, as it has been in every stolen moment they’ve shared since then.

 

He moves to her neck, sucking at the skin below her ear, but Rey stops him with a small shove against his shoulder. He pouts, then tries and fails to hide the hurt he feels. It’s no secret that they’re together, or at least, that there’s something between them. But Rey has kept him at arm’s length whenever they’re in public, ever since that first failed meal, and she won’t let him mark her up like this.

 

She wants to explain it to him, the way she feels trapped between the life she has built for herself here — teacher, student, pilot, soldier, friend, Jedi — and the one she’s afraid he will be consigned to — outcast, pariah, black sheep. He’s found his way back to the light, and now she needs him to find his way into a role in her life that does not create constant discord. She doesn’t know how to create that role for him.

 

He slams his eyes shut, and buries his face back in her neck. He doesn’t try again to give her a lovebite, and Rey can’t quite find the words to explain why she’s stopped him. She sends an image of her friends, frowning at her, across the bond, and Ben shudders, then nods. The moment passes without them ever really addressing the issue. Ben’s unsteady breaths puff against her skin, turning her thoughts towards less virtuous activities.

 

She tries to course correct, and tell him about her students, something she’s been putting off for a long time now. “There are some people I want you to meet. Force-sensitive younglings, who have come to us because they heard about me. I’m... helping them. Or, at least, trying to.”

 

He shakes his head, and when he speaks, it is muffled by the gathered linen at her shoulder. “No. Rey... I can’t. I won’t be the cause of—”

 

“Don’t you think they have something to learn from you?”

 

“From what _happened_ to me, perhaps. What I’ve done. A cautionary tale. Warn them about me, but—”

 

All of a sudden, she sees it like she was there. He sends the memory of _that_ night on Yavin 4 across the bond and it’s so vivid that she can feel the muggy, humid air, hear the eerie call of the whisperbirds from the dark jungle, smell the hot metallic blood of the padawans who lie motionless at the foot of Luke’s training temple, their eyes unblinking and flat, some of them still just _children_ —

 

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” he’s muttering. Rey’s face is tucked in his dark robes, and with a start, she realizes it’s wet with hot tears. She’s shaking, her knuckles white where she’s grabbed hold of his forearms. “Rey, please. Say something. It was too much, I know. But you need to understand—”

 

“I do,” she sobs. “I understand now.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

For three days, he practically evaporates. She catches glimpses of him here and there, deep in conversation with his mother. But he’s cut off from the bond, and the strange absence of his emotions, usually swirling like a deep-sea current beneath her own, leaves Rey unmoored and agitated.

 

Three days, she waits. Three days, he hides. Late in the evening of the third day, when Rey thinks she’ll scream if she doesn’t touch him, doesn’t find some way to fix this— she reaches out with her feelings, and suddenly, she can sense him. He’s sitting in the darkened cockpit of the _Millennium Falcon_ , staring out at the empty hangar, taking periodic swallows from a bottle of Corellian whiskey.

 

“Hi,” she murmurs a few minutes later, when she climbs into the co-pilot’s chair beside him.

 

Ben nods, and hands her the bottle. Rey takes a long pull from it without knowing how strong it will be, then spits half of it out onto Ben’s shirt, coughing and gagging at the liquor’s acrid burn.

 

“I _am_ sorry,” he says, taking the bottle back.

 

“For the whiskey?” She tries to smile, but feels it falter when he levels a dejected look at her through half-lidded eyes.

 

“For what I showed you. You didn’t need to see that.”

 

“I think,” Rey contends, reaching for the bottle again and carefully taking a more reasonable sip, “That I did.”

 

She stands, then melts into his lap, her legs swung to one side, her free arm wrapped around his neck.

 

When Rey kisses him, his mouth tastes like whiskey, but so does hers, and that feels _right_ , somehow. His hand comes to a tentative rest on her hip, then refuses to explore further.

 

“Don’t—don’t you _want_ me?” She doesn’t want to sound needy, or like she’s hurt that he froze her out for days. He hears it anyway, or maybe she’s projecting it.

 

“Always.” He pulls her up until her breasts are level with his face, then yanks at the collar of her sleep shirt until they’re exposed, latching onto a dusky nipple and circling it with the tip of his tongue. “But—” He kisses a trail across her sternum, to pay the same attentions to the other breast. “I was afraid _you_ might not want me.”

 

“Always, me too, always,” she mumbles into his hair, the flat, broad slide of his tongue against her areola sending her mind into the stratosphere.

 

“I—can we—” He pauses, huffing with frustration, and glances at her nervously.

 

“Ben, what?”

 

_He doesn’t want her after all, he was only trying to let her down easy, he doesn't believe he can redeem himself after all, he's going back to the First Order, he’s realized what a mistake he’s made—getting involved with her—he’s trying to find a way out, everyone always trying to get away from her—_

 

“Rey. Stop.”

 

He’s pulled her shirt back up, and tugs on her thighs until she settles more firmly into his lap. “I’m—I think I’m drunk.” He shakes his head. “Can I just hold you? Can we save this for when we’re—”

 

“Sober?” she asks, incredulous.

 

“In a better place. A better time.” He kisses her, a gentle brush of his lips against hers.

 

“So—you just want to snuggle?” She can’t tell if she’s outraged or charmed by this.

 

“Yes,” he moans, pulling her tight to his chest. “Just let me hold you. Like this.”

 

“O—okay,” she says, laying her head on his shoulder. It’s nice; his warmth seeps through his clothes and hers. His torso is a hard wall but he molds it to hers, and somehow, they fit together perfectly. They have the whole night to sit here, in the quiet and the dark, and just — be together. It strikes Rey suddenly what an absolute luxury that is, and like a glowlamp switched on — she understands Ben’s request.

 

“Just like this,” she echoes, wrapping her arms around Ben’s neck and wiggling closer.

 

He hums, a happy sound. “Just like this.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Hey, you son of a bantha, what are you thinking, taking the A-Wings out for kriffing _joy rides_?” barks Poe the next afternoon, busting into the common area where about a dozen people are lazing on old sofas, watching a swoop racing HoloVid.

 

Ben and Rey are stationed at the edge of the room, at a rickety table. They've been timing each other to see who can re-assemble a Cerean puzzle cube faster. No one is speaking to them, but then, no one has been bothering them either, and the entire scene verges on peaceful. Domestic.

 

Not anymore, though. Poe is furious, eyes blazing, and he’s at the table before Rey can even stand up. With one swipe of his hand he sends the hundreds of tiny plasto pieces flying.

 

Ben rises, his hands held aloft in the universal sign of surrender, and shakes his head. “What the hell are you talking about?”

 

“You think you can just up and _decide_ one day you don’t wanna be a bad guy anymore, walk in here like you own the joint, date whoever you want, and treat our fleet like it’s your own personal garage of toys?” Poe rants, chest puffed, jabbing his pointer finger at Ben’s solar plexus. “I _know_ you’ve been taking the Blue Squadron’s A-Wings out, Ren. We have security droids in the hangar for a reason.”

 

Rey watches this interaction, a sinking feeling in her gut, and when Ben's lips twitch — not exactly a smirk, but as close as he gets to one — she almost groans. _He did, the barvy bastard._ So that’s where — and how — he’d been hiding from her.

 

“You’ve gone thermal, _pal_ ,” he tells Poe, and the man nearly explodes in anger.

 

“That. Is. _It_. Fists up, _Kylo Ren_ , we’re settling this like _men!_ You’re gonna find my boot so far up your exhaust port, you won’t know which way is up!”

 

Ben doesn’t react. In fact, he’s still standing there with his hands raised, the very picture of equanimity. Rey even catches him winking in her direction, and she’s so flabbergasted by the action, she almost misses him say, “You’d never beat me in hand-to-hand combat. So let’s even the odds—how about we settle this like _pilots_?”

 

There is a very long, very tense moment when the two men stare at each other, eyes narrowed. Finally, Poe glances around, his eyes landing on the swoop race that, though forgotten during his dramatic entrance, is still being projected in the middle of the room. A smug smile pulls at the corners of his mouth.

 

“Alright. We’ll use the Locusts. I assume you know where to find them. Race to the palace ruins, on the south side of the big lake. We leave in five minutes.”

 

Ben nods.

 

“If I win,” Poe continues, “You film a holovid, listing and apologizing for all of your crimes, and we slice it into the next broadcast of the HoloNet News. _And_ you work on the maintenance crew for the next year.”

 

Rey watches the color drain from Ben’s face, and she feels his trepidation, but he nods again. It occurs to her that this has become about a hell of a lot more than a few stolen joyrides on some old starfighter.

 

“And if I win,” Ben says, his voice dropping to a low, silken murmur, “ _you_ stop treating Rey like sithspit just because she’s _with_ _me_.”

 

Rey almost puts an end to it then, unwilling to be part of this display of ridiculous masculine idiocy, but Ben shoots her a pleading look, and Poe’s eyes flick to her with something akin to surprise. Maybe she should work on her poker face, because she thinks that some of the buried hurt she's been feeling from the last few weeks of ostracism is showing.

 

Poe sighs, and nods. He shoves his hand at Ben, who takes it. They shake perfunctorily, once, and then Poe turns on his heel, stomping out of the lounge.

 

“Ben,” she tries, but he’s already pulling off his tunic, revealing a sleeveless undershirt. He’s going to go through with it. It’s so stupid she doesn’t know whether to laugh or scream. “Ben, no. Those bikes are _ancient_.”

 

“I _have_ to do this,” he grumbles, turning and pulling her in for a quick kiss against her temple. “I'll be careful.”

 

“You better be,” she says to his back, as he barrels out of the room.

 

After they whiz off, perched on the seats of their rusted, spindly speeder bikes, the crowd of people gathered around to watch begins to disperse. She and Finn exchange a tired look.

 

“Hundred credits says we never see ‘em again,” he snarks, rolling his eyes.

 

Rey wants to laugh, she really does. But she can’t shake the terrible feeling that this is not going to end well.

 

 

. . .

 

 

It’s Poe who falls off first. He at least has that small point of pride to hold onto.

 

Of course, Ben is the reason the pilot loses control of his speeder bike in the first place. They somehow manage to make it through most of the way without incident, zipping between trees, neck and neck, despite occasionally knocking bikes in an attempt to unseat each other.

 

It’s only once they reach the shoreline, still tied, that they truly begin to take offensive measures. And while Ben's powerful shove is the reason Poe falls, Ben is _also_ the reason that Ben loses control of his _own_ speeder; he's so distracted by his victorious gloating that he almost misses the large boulder protruding from the water, and _just_  barely succeeds in swerving past — but he loses his balance and spins off the speeder in the process.

 

From the water, they both watch in silent chagrin as the Locusts skitter wildly across the lake’s silvery surface and erupt into a fiery mess upon collision with the palace ruins.

 

It’s awkward, after they've swam to the nearest bit of mucky shoreline. They stand side by side, catching their breaths and bearing witness to the distant inferno in uncomfortable silence. But they don’t exactly have a wealth of options, so without consultation, they both turn towards LX-Robynsun V —  now well over fifteen kilometers away — and begin walking.

 

And walking.

 

And walking.

 

After a few hours, they’re both badly in need of a rest. Kuras’s late afternoon light and heat is relentless, and though they’ve both dried off from their involuntary dip in the lake, they’re now drenched in sweat. Ben’s pride won’t let him stop if Poe doesn’t, but eventually Poe throws up his hands, groans, and collapses onto the nearest lichen-covered boulder, drawing a duralloy canteen from his satchel and taking deep gulps from it. After a moment’s consideration, he offers it to Ben.

 

He accepts the proverbial olive branch, trying not to swallow all of its water, though he wants to.

 

Poe studies him, leaning his elbows on his knees. He runs a hand through his dark curls, and scans the mint-colored evergreens around them. He lingers on the edge of speaking his mind just a second longer, and then, Ben can see the moment he resolves to have out with it.

 

“Just—help me here, will ya? Because Han Solo is—was, I mean, well, he wasn’t the most upstanding citizen in the New Republic, but he was a good guy. And the General? Hey, I mean, she’s _Leia_. So how the hell do you just walk away from all that? How do you _become_ Kylo Ren? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, I don’t get it.”

 

Ben doesn’t know whether to throttle the pilot or throw the canteen at him and run. This is a question he has answered for exactly one person, and only once he was so hopelessly in love with her he would’ve told her anything about himself she wanted to know.

 

“You wouldn’t understand,” he says after a moment, his voice hoarse from hours of exertion.

 

“Cut the crap, Solo,” Poe jeers.

 

“I don’t owe you shit!” Ben’s trying to keep his voice level, his emotions steady. He’s failing.

 

“Hey jerk-ass, who _exactly_ do you think has been here all these years helping _your_ mother, watching her try and fail not to be crushed by _your_ decisions while you were off gallivanting with Snoke like the son of a Sith harlot?”

 

That’s all it takes. Ben’s on top of him before he can stop himself, swinging wildly. He doesn’t have his saber anymore — a contingency of his probation — and though he could use the Force... what he really wants is to beat the snot out of Poe fair and square.

 

He’s got height and weight on the man, and he gets in a few good licks, but Poe is faster than him, and more nimble on the slippery moss-covered tree roots that keep tripping up Ben’s large feet.

 

“That the best you got, you jumped up Corellian dirt farmer? I thought you were the infamous Kylo Ren? Don’t you remember what you did? You almost _killed_ Finn! You _tortured_ me, you kath hound!”

 

Ben lunges for him, barely able to land a punch, he’s so angry and afraid and worst of all, so _ashamed_.

 

Because it’s true, what Poe is saying. All of it. And maybe that means all of this has been a lie — maybe he doesn’t deserve to come back to the Light. Or to receive Rey’s love. Or to see his mother look at him with something other than fear and disappointment.

 

When he swings again, Poe ducks under his arm and pulls out a blaster. He shoots, and the plasma burns as it grazes Ben’s left flank, right before Poe lands a heavy, booted kick to the back of his leg. He doesn’t try to stay upright — he collapses, landing hard on his hands and knees. That same boot, metal-toed, is kicking the blaster wound — once, twice, and then Ben is curled in the fetal position, his arms crossed over his head.

 

 _Use the Force against him,_ says a rasping voice, as Poe lands another kick to his gut. Years of tutelage he’s tried so hard to unlearn taunts him. _Light him up, crisp him. Choke him. Pull him to pieces. Bathe in his blood._

 

But Ben doesn’t. He just lies there. _Coward_ , hisses the voice.

 

 _I don’t care_ , Ben tells it. _No more death._

 

The onslaught stops. He can hear Poe breathing heavily, and when he opens his eyes, he’s still standing close, close enough that Ben can see that the laces of his left boot are about to come untied.

 

“I made a mistake,” Ben croaks. He thinks one of his ribs might be broken. “Everyone was afraid of me. Luke was afraid of me. I was lonely, and messed up, and confused. I chose _wrong_ , okay? And then I made another mistake. And another. And then I’d made five years of them, and then ten, and then there was no going back. Not until Rey.”

 

Poe bellows down at him — a pure, unadulterated expression of his fury. When he’s exhausted himself, he stomps out of view.

 

He returns a moment later, tossing a bacta patch somewhere in the vicinity of Ben’s torso. “Put that on the wound,” he commands. “I’m pretty sure I felt a rib break.”

 

Ben does, sliding it under his thin white shirt then slapping it onto the part of his flank that feels like it’s on fire and being stabbed with each inhale. He accepts Poe’s proffered arm when he tries to stand.

 

“Can you walk?”

 

“Yes,” Ben grits out, but Poe has already turned and continued marching in the direction of the base.

 

“You’re a hell of a pilot, Solo,” he calls over his shoulder, as though it’s easier to concede this compliment to Ben if he doesn’t have to look at his face. “I’m secure enough in my superior skills to give you that.”

 

“Tha—”

 

“And you take a hit well enough, so congratulations there.”

 

Ben glares at the back of his head, and says nothing.

 

“If you hurt her, we’re gonna revisit this.”

 

He mutters, “You think if I hurt her there’d be anything left for you to punch, after Rey and my mother got through with me?”

 

Poe freezes, then twists to stare back at him, a sardonic expression on his tilted face. “I’ll be kesseled, did you, Benjamin Solo, heir apparent to Darth Vader, just make a _joke_?”

 

“Oh switch off,” he grunts, limping past Poe.

 

And of all the ways Commander Dameron could respond to that, he chooses simply to give an insouciant shrug and say, “You got it, pal.”

 

The rest of the hike back is conducted in silence, but the tenor of that silence — although unacknowledged by both men — has changed. Something between them has thawed, slightly.

 

When they reach LX-Robynsun V, long after the sun has set, Poe nods at him, slaps him on the shoulder, and wanders off.

 

 _It’s a start_ , Ben figures.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The Twi’lek padawan’s name is Na'lestaa, and she approaches Ben a few days after his and Poe’s spectacular fiasco of a pissing match.

 

“Were you really Master of the Knights of Ren?” she calls up to him. He’s performing customary checks on the last of an X-Wing’s four laser cannons, and he doesn’t answer right away, focused as he is on finishing the procedure and hoping maybe she’ll give up and go away.

 

When he finally glances down from his place on the wing, she’s still standing there, her slender green arms crossed defiantly.

 

“I was,” he says, climbing into the cockpit to run through a systems check.

 

“And Leader Snoke’s protégé?”

 

“That too.”

 

“Do you still feel it? The— _Dark side_?”

 

That makes Ben pause, and he leans out of the cockpit to study the young female. “Do you?” he counters.

 

A shrug. “I think I might. I mean—I don’t know. I get so angry, sometimes, and when I’m sparring with the others I feel like I’m tapping into this—place. It feels, um. Powerful.”

 

Ben sighs, and climbs down from the starfighter. “C’mon,” he says, with a jerk of his head. “I’m going to need a cup of caf for this conversation.”

 

This is how Ben ends up in the mess hall, a group of teenaged padawans huddled around the table while he — haltingly, wincing, choosing his words with such care he goes silent for long stretches of time — explains to them how he fell from the light.

 

“It’s seductive,” he tells them. “And it will find the point where you are weak, then exploit it. For me, it was my need for—a place. Approval. I didn’t have it, or—I felt as though I didn’t. Snoke used that. For you, it might be that. It might be something different.”

 

The younglings — stumbling into adulthood, full of hormones and questions and already having their heads turned by a swirling tempest of emotions they can’t yet identify — they sit spellbound, hanging onto his every word.

 

“Will we know? When it’s happening?” asks a young Skrilling named Crik. His heavy, three-fingered hands grip the table and his thick, hairless brow is creased with worry.

 

Ben considers him for a moment, then shrugs. “I... don’t know if you will. I can’t tell you that. Be honest with yourself. At first, and for a long time, it will make you feel powerful. But then—eventually—it will isolate you. When that happens—don’t make my mistake. Don't presume it’s too late.”

 

“Aren’t you in love with Rey? How can you be a Jedi? _Are_ you a Jedi?” Na'lestaa is leaning forward on the table, a slight frown marring her graceful jade features.

 

“I—” Ben pauses, giving a self-deprecating chuckle. “I don’t know. I have darkness in me, still, if that’s what you’re asking. I think—I always will. But I’m less afraid now. _That’s_ what has changed.”

 

“Will you teach me to fight?” The question comes from Jaa, a red-headed human boy from Dantooine.

 

“No,” Ben snaps, then sighs when the boy flinches at his severe tone. “But I will help you, if you think you’re going down that path. Come speak to me... any of you. If nothing else—I can listen, without judgment.”

 

“But you won’t teach us? Rey goes so _slow_. We _just_ started lifting rocks.” Na’lestaa again, still pushing. _This girl is going to be a force to be reckoned with_ , he thinks.

 

“I leave that to Rey. She’s the _true_ Jedi,” he demurs, and gently steers them towards a different topic.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Rey stands at the doorway of the mess hall, unnoticed by the young Force-sensitives who have flocked to Ben, full of curiosity. He _is_ teaching them, even as he tells them that he won’t.

 

 _This is what we could be,_ she thinks. _This is how it should be. This is what it has all been for._

 

_This is the life I saw, that night on Ahch-To._

 

He looks up, as though she’s spoken those words aloud. Their eyes meet from across the room, and he makes to stand up, but Rey shakes her head at him.

 

_Don’t, Ben. Stay. Help them._

 

Hesitantly, he nods, and settles back into his seat. He turns his attention back to the young padawans.

 

Rey watches on, a dreamy smile blooming across her face.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Enough, Rey. Just tell me what you want to show me,” Ben commands, as she tugs on his wrist, leading him down a corridor he has never traversed before.

 

She pauses, and looks back at him. “Trust me?”

 

“Always,” he says, without hesitation. She smiles, and turns towards an open doorway at the end of the hall.

 

“Come on, in here.”

 

When Ben reaches the threshold, he freezes. All the padawans who spent what felt like hours interrogating him yesterday are already seated on the floor of the cavernous room, off to one side. Rey has picked up two sticks from the floor, each one dipped in what appears to be red paint.

 

“Twin Suns,” she says, beaming at him. “We can use painted sticks, since you happen to be without a proper blade at the moment.”

 

“With good reason.” Ben is angry with her, feels tricked and put on the spot. She senses this, and she can see it in his tense stance, his drawn face.

 

She draws close. “It’s just a demonstration. Showing off, remember? You won’t really hurt me, and I won’t hurt you, Ben. And they’ll _learn_ something... Maybe.”

 

Ben sighs. She watches the conflict between his urge to give her the things she wants and his lingering fear of himself as it plays out across his face. This is too much for him, she realizes. This is asking too much. She places a hand on his chest — a gentle, affectionate gesture.

 

“We can—never mind. I’m sorry. I’ll just move them through some forms, inst—”

 

“Okay,” Ben says. He takes one of the wooden sticks, then paces to the far end of the room. “Okay.”

 

She watches him for a moment, but he doesn’t waver, so she moves to the other side of the room, and braces herself.

 

The first Force leap, as much flying as it is actual jumping, goes to Ben. She tries to spin out of reach of him while pointing her stick down near his booted ankles, but she’s miscalculated just how long his arms are. She feels the tap, and when she lands on solid ground, she spies the red smear on her right shoulder.

 

“Dammit!” she cries, before remembering herself. She looks to the wide-eyed, guffawing adolescents. “Don’t repeat that.”

 

The second leap goes to her. Ben swings with his usual brute speed and strength directly towards her feet — perhaps hoping not to hurt her — and Rey does an elegant little flip mid-air, tapping him on the back of the thigh right before she lands. When she turns back towards him, on the other side of the room, she can see him twisting and contorting himself, trying to find the paint.

 

“It’s on your ass, Solo!” Na’lestaa shouts, cackling.

 

Ben glares at her for a moment, before heaving a forbearing sigh, and preparing himself for the third leap.

 

It’s a tie. Rey manages to catch him under the chin just as he taps _her_ behind.

 

“Why, you—” she growls, when she spots the slash of red paint across the seat of her own pants.

 

“Fair’s fair.”

 

She takes a swing at him with the stick, which he dodges easily. The next attack she attempts with a bit more grace, whirling on the ball of her foot and bringing the stick around with a loose reverse-grip.

 

“Good,” Ben remarks to their enraptured audience, even as he blocks her blow. “That’s one of my favorite moves. Perhaps she learned it from me?”

 

He twists away, then shifts into an attack from behind, the stick whistling centimeters past her ear. Rey yanks her head away. “See how quick she is? That's all her. This is how quick you must be, when you engage in a duel.”

 

As he's speaking, Rey ducks down to a spinning crouch before pushing the stick up into the hard, flat plane of his abdomen.

 

“Oof,” he huffs, an involuntary reaction. “If Rey were fighting me with an actual lightsaber, I would be dying right now. How did she do it?”

 

“She’s your girlfriend and you’re going easy on her?” asks one of the bolder students.

 

Rey sputters with indignation. “He better _not_ be!”

 

“Never. How’d she _really_ do it?”

 

Crik raises his hand, then waits. Rey is confused, and looks to Ben, who widens his eyes meaningfully and tilts his head towards the Skrilling boy.

 

“Uh, yes Crik?” she asks.

 

“You used your disadvantage, your shorter height, against him,” he says.

 

“Exactly.” Ben is staring at her, a light sweat just beginning to dampen the edge of his hairline. “It’s very clever, but I wouldn’t expect anything less from Rey. You should _never_ expect anything less from your opponent.”

 

She’s blushing. She can’t help it. Her diffidence and her hungry pride — starved of love, respect, companionship her entire life — has her preening at Ben’s easy concession of her skill.

 

 _There you are. I've been_ waiting _for you_ , she tells him.

 

His nostrils flare, and he comes closer. He leans down, and lays a massive hand on her waist, then pulls her in for a chaste kiss. _I know, love. I had to become who you needed me to be._

 

_I’m ready now._

 

The students are screaming in scandalized delight, and Ben throws them a rakish grin.

 

“Well,” he says, feigning resigned acceptance. “I’m already here. I might as well show you a few tricks.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

In dribs and drabs, life becomes easier.

 

One day, seated together in the mess hall, Rey is devouring a crumblebun with one hand while the other rests discreetly on Ben’s thigh under the table. They’re reading the news from a datapad on the table. Suddenly, Rose seats herself across from them. She smiles nervously, fiddling with her dark hair.

 

 _Be nice_. Her tone brooks no argument, and it makes Ben sit up straighter. He politely nods and throws in the odd question when Rose begins to gripe about the latest issue with Commander Dameron’s accelerator pod. Rey’s hand slides higher up his pants, cupping him through his trousers. Later, she catches him in the hall and with a shy smile, pulls him into her bunk. Very little sleeping happens that night.

 

Ben often retreats to the _Millennium Falcon_ when everything on the base becomes too much for him. He sits in the darkened cockpit, just thinking and remembering, or he plays himself in dejarik. Sometimes he sleeps in his father’s old bunk. One night, Finn shows up bearing a plastene canister of jet juice. For a while they play dejarik and drink, barely speaking to each other. Ben works up the nerve to apologize, but Finn just shrugs.

 

“We all have regrets,” he tells Ben. Once they’re both well and truly soused, they take turns to see who can affect the most outlandish Hux and Phasma impersonations.

 

Finn wins, of course.

 

Dribs and drabs. They begin to eat meals with their compatriots in the mess hall. They get invited, as a couple, to illicit parties thrown out in the woods when the soldiers need to blow off steam. They fly the _Falcon_ together, they spar together, they take up residence in Rey’s bunk together. They’re seen as a unit, a team — the strangest team that most of the pilots have ever seen — but an effective one, nonetheless.

 

They’re accepted, begrudgingly at first. And then, after a while, they become a rather popular point of gossip.

 

Some people begin whispering to Rey that they get what she sees in him, that the scars make him look rugged and he’s got that haunted, reformed bad boy thing. Some people begin whispering to Ben that they’d probably switch sides for Rey as well, she’s whip-smart and fierce and there’s something unfailingly sexy in how pure-hearted she’s remained, despite her rough past.

 

Rey and Ben both smile and nod at this.

 

They start holding hands at every available opportunity — no matter who’s watching.

 

 

. . .

 

 

She’s working her way through a Domrai fruit, and making a mess of it. Sticky red juice from the pulpy flesh runs down her fingers, over her palms, traces rivulet trails across her delicate, bony wrists. Rey makes no attempt to eat neatly, simply shoves an entire wedge of the fruit in her mouth. Her cheeks balloon comically, and she closes her eyes, humming with satisfaction.

 

Ben hates the fruit, has always found it too bitter. But when she offers up a little hunk — pinched delicately between her slender, red-stained fingers — he cannot refuse. He takes it from her, his lips closing around her digits to suck them clean, and then he returns to the ancient text he has been attempting to study in the comfort of her sleeper.

 

She’s resting beside him, her arm brushing his every time she lifts another piece to her mouth. She must decide that she’s finished, because she sets a few uneaten pieces on the floor beside the sleeper, and curls her body into his.

 

“Ben,” she says, pushing the book aside. Ben tries to read on, lost in his efforts to wrap his mind around the arcane language of the _Aionomica_.

 

She rubs her clothed sex against the side of his thigh — and Ben slams the text shut, tossing it over the side of the sleeper.

 

“With me now?”

 

“You have my full attention,” he says, turning on his side and sliding his hand up under her loose tunic. He splays his fingers across the flat plane of her belly — his thumb and his pinky reach each of her sharp hip bones.

 

Ben frowns. “Are you eating enough?”

 

She clicks her tongue at him. “I’m trying—I have a lot of hungry years to make up for. Ben, _focus_. I want you to do something for me.”

 

Her lips catch his, and he loses himself in the sensual wrestle of their kiss, the way the leg she’s slung over his hip keeps his groin snugly resting against hers, the feel of her hands sliding across his shoulders.

 

“What’s that?” he asks, when they pause to catch their breath.

 

“I want you to kiss me, here.” She points to her neck. “Hard. Leave a mark.”

 

He just about loses his mind at that. “You sure?”

 

“Mmhmm.” She’s urging him, her hands at his shoulders tugging him down. Ben does as she asks, licking a strip up the column of her neck then settling his mouth on the thin skin beneath her ear. He opens his mouth, his lips forming a seal — her skin tastes of salt and soap and _woman_ — and he sucks.

 

Hard, like she asked.

 

She gasps at the sensation, pulling him over her until he’s settled into the cradle of her thighs, then rocking against him. Ben’s been hard since she started eating the fruit, though he’s been trying to ignore that. It hasn’t been easy though — her mouth is a shiny, sticky ruby red, and he could barely see the words on the page for the obscene sounds she was making as she tried to contain the Domrai’s juice with her lips. He thrusts against her, his mouth still latched onto her throat, and they both moan at the sensation.

 

There’s something he’s been waiting to ask her, looking for some sign she might be open to it. Ben figures this — her acceptance of him laying a kind of claim like this — might be that sign.

 

“I want,” he says, when he finally pulls away, “to tie you up. Can I do that? Could I... have that?”

 

Her hazel irises have been absorbed by her pupils, dark saucers blown wide, and she thrusts up against him. Ben’s not even sure if she’s aware she’s doing it.

 

She whispers, “Yes. Alright. You can. But—no pain. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough pain in my life.”

 

His gut twists at that. He _has_ to kiss her, and he does, soundly enough that he hopes he’s driven whatever memories she might be reliving from her mind. She tastes like the bitter fruit, and he thinks he might change his stance on it after all.

 

“No pain, never for you Rey. I only want to make you feel good.”

 

“And take control of _something_?” Maybe she’s in his mind, maybe she understands without even needing to dip into his thoughts. It hardly matters, because she _gets_ it.

 

“Is that okay?” he hears himself ask, in a voice that’s deeper and breathier than normal.

 

She nods, her lips slightly parted, her breathing just as labored.

 

Ben stands, shucking his breeches and his shirt as he casts about the room for something... rope-like. He settles on his belt, and one of Rey’s. When he turns back to her, she’s shed her own clothes. She’s lying on the sleeper, her slender body completely exposed to him, small breasts shaking with each nervous breath. Her legs are parted and he can see how slick she is, wet with excitement that matches his own. It steadies his resolve.

 

He carefully ties one wrist to a bar on the ferrocarbon headboard, then the other. He tests them, demanding Rey tell him if they’re pinching her. _It’s not about control_ , he thinks, _this thing I want to do._ Well, not entirely. Yes, he wants Rey to give him that —  just for a little while. He wants free reign to touch her, taste her.

 

More importantly, he wants to worship her. Like she deserves.

 

He settles himself on his stomach between her legs, and pulls each slender thigh over his shoulder, stroking the downy haired limbs as though he’s settling a skittish animal. Then he locks eyes with hers — she’s biting her lip, her hips twitching up towards him, and she nods jerkily. He nods back, equally affected.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Rey's mind is racing, lust and anticipation giving her stomach that swooping feeling she usually only gets from doing something very, very dangerous while inside the cockpit of a starfighter.

 

She'd watched Ben as he pushed himself up off the mattress, watched as his shirt was removed to reveal his wide, sculpted chest, sprinkled with a few dark hairs and the jagged scars he’s collected over the years. Having rushed to pull off her own clothing, she resumed her prone position. Then she took a few anticipatory moments to admire him; she reacquainted herself with the beauty marks that adorned his face, his solid torso, and even the ones visible through the dusting of hair on his thighs and calves.

 

He'd secured her wrists, checking and double-checking her comfort with a fastidiousness that almost made her want to scold him, but in truth — something about Ben’s desire to tie her down makes her feel treasured, and wanted. She’s not sure if that’s how it’s supposed to be — sex isn’t a topic she’s ever broached with any of her friends — but right now, she doesn’t care. Ben wants her to hold still, he wants to take care of her, wants to mete out her pleasure at his own pace. It makes her feel like she belongs — _finally_ , _thank the stars_ — belongs to someone in the way she’s always wanted.

 

His shaft is thick, and it had been twitching, just for her. The weeping, flushed head had bobbed against the sculpted contours of his belly as he lowered himself to the sleeper. They’ve done some version of this before — made love in this very bunk— but it’s always been gentle, and soft, and careful — and somehow, right now, Rey doesn’t mind if it’s not any of those things.

 

Now, he lowers his face to her sex. For a minute he just gapes at it, and Rey shifts, self-conscious. He’s never stared quite this boldly, or directly, and the mid-morning light is streaming in through the small, high windows of her bunk. _Should she be hairless down there?_ She’s never thought to ask him if the dark hair, currently soaked from her arousal, bothers him. _Does he think it’s ugly? Does he like the way it smells?_

 

“It’s perfect,” he croons, lowering his lips to the hood of her clit and placing a chaste kiss there. “Like you.” He sinks lower, his full lips engulfing her in a way that immediately brings to mind how he pulled the Domrai fruit from her hand. Her vulva is consumed by his mouth, his tongue collecting the moisture he finds within. He licks up one side of her folds, then down the other, and Rey whimpers.

 

“You are so beautiful, especially here,” he hums, his nose brushing her clit as he sets upon her like a ripe, juicy fruit. “I want this—to belong to me.” His dark gaze flicks up to meet hers. “Can it, Rey? Only mine, only for me.”

 

“Greedy,” she gasps, tightening her thighs around his ears in attempt to redirect his attention back where she wants it.

 

“Yes,” he hisses, returning his tongue to her folds. He laves a broad stripe up her center, then hones in on her clit, one hand letting go of her thigh so he can probe at her slit.

 

Kriff, it’s already so good. She wants her hands back, wants to tug on his hair and make him slide his fingers inside, wants him to climb up here and frick her like he means it.

 

_“Ben.”_

 

“I won’t leave you like this, wet and needy,” he says, his lips brushing her mound as he speaks. “But I could. And the thought of that, Rey, that I could make you stay _put_ and never leave—”

 

“Please!” she yelps. “I’m yours, Ben, only yours, just please—”

 

He’s got one finger inside her, then two, and he’s suckling at her clit, straying only to lap sloppily at her drenched folds. He’s building her towards her release, then letting it slip away, then building her up again. Rey’s not entirely sure how long he works at it; for a while it's just her heels digging into tightly knit cords of his latissimus dorsi and a sustained series of mewling breaths pulled from her lungs and his mouth, stars... his mouth.

 

Finally, he doesn’t back off, and Rey feels it.

 

Her pulse pounds in her ears, her entire body rigid. Something beautiful is just on the crest of happening, all the muscles in her body are trilling a high-strung tune, a key being turned in her core winding everything tighter and tighter—

 

Ben crooks his long fingers forward, like he’s beckoning to her, and everything — _everything_ — in Rey’s body convulses, hard. She’s twitching, her walls fluttering around him, leaking into his mouth as she keens out her orgasm. It’s beyond any kind of good she’s ever made herself feel, possibly even beyond any kind of good she’s felt while Ben was buried deep inside her.

 

It’s the kind of good that comes from knowing somebody loves you, wants to see you fall apart just because it makes them happy to know they can give that to you. Knows exactly how to do it because your thoughts are their thoughts. And this make them — him, _Ben_ — feel like he belongs to you, too.

 

“Ben, please,” she hears herself sob, which is when she realizes that she’s crying.

 

“Hey, hey,” he murmurs, crawling up her body, laying wet, reverent kisses along the way. When he’s hovering over her, he reaches up, and frees her hands. They fly to his biceps, tugging him down until he collapses onto her.

 

“Please, please, please,” she’s babbling, pushing her hips towards his.

 

“Rey, kriff Rey.” He doesn’t tell her not to cry, she realizes, because the moisture on his cheeks is not from her — he feels this too, this oasis they’ve discovered together after so many years of wandering through the desert.

 

His hands span her waist when he wraps them around her, helping her roll onto her belly. He slides an arm underneath her, his large hand palming her entire left breast. When the head of his cock nudges at her gently, he’s blanketed over her, a heavy and assuring weight. He whispers how much he loves her and how good she is for him and how perfect she did as he pushes all the way in, then begins to thrust. His other hand lands on her hip, raising her up so he can slide his thighs under hers.

 

Rey keens; she feels almost raw from the sensation of him inside her — it’s still a stretch, and she’s still sensitive from coming so hard, but she needs this — needs to feel him find his own release.

 

“Can you come again for me, my love?” He sucks a bruise into the side of her neck to match the other he’s given her. His hand holds her breast like something delicate, his solid chest melded to her dripping back.

 

She shakes her head, a wet, hitched breath escaping her parted lips.

 

“I think you’ll find that you can,” he sighs, and he spreads his fingers over her mons, lifting her pelvis up a little higher while he thumbs at her clit. He swivels his hips until the flared head of his member is brushing past that spot he found with his finger— and then he’s hammering at it, making the cot bounce with his savage thrusts.

 

“Kriff, this _has_ to be all mine. No one else, not ever. Can’t believe something so tight and perfect belongs to me, Rey, everything I ever wanted—”

 

She comes with a breathless wail. He follows right behind her — shoving in to the hilt, his pelvis flush against her bottom and his fingers bruising where they’ve migrated to hold her hips in an iron grip. He groans as he bows his forehead towards the nape of her neck, his hips giving a few final spastic jerks, before he pulls out and collapses at her side.

 

Rey slumps back onto her stomach, feeling completely spent. She steals a glance at Ben, who’s on his back, still pulling in heaving breaths.

 

“Okay?” he asks, running the back of his fingers along her arm.

 

“Yes,” she sighs, and slides herself over until she’s sprawled on top of him.

 

He hums a little, and his eyes flutter closed.

 

“Perfect, actually,” she adds, in a whisper. They’re a sweaty heap of humanity — Rey can feel the wet, swollen mess they’ve made of her cunt; the tender bruises from where he held her and kissed her are just beginning to blossom and ache. She’s never felt better, not ever in her life.

 

“I meant what I told the padawans, Rey. There's still darkness in me. I wish I could say that I feel in control of it all the time, but—” He trails off with an unsure glance down at her.

 

Rey picks her mind up off the floor where it lies a molten mess, and focuses on this important thing he is trying to tell her. “I know that. Don’t you remember, that I can feel you? I feel the darkness, too. But—you’re stronger than it. I _also_ know that.”

 

“Optimist.”

 

“I prefer wise beyond my years, actually,” she says, tweaking one of his flat nipples. She soothes it with a soft caress, followed by a kitten lick. She gives him a saucy grin when he cocks an eyebrow down at her.

 

He lets out a rough chuff of air, but his hand slides into her hair, keeping her face close to his pectoral.

 

“Rey,” he rumbles. “I can’t.”

 

“We have so much _time_ , Ben,” she murmurs, lowering her mouth back to his chest. “I think you’ll find that you _can_.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

The war continues. It takes the First Order time to recover, after the one-two punch of Ben’s ambush and the New Alliance’s ensuant series of _very_ well-informed attacks. But there are enough diehard believers in their ranks that they limp on, crippled but unwilling to surrender. Ben begins to help his mother, strictly in an advisory capacity, and he and Rey continue to fly the _Falcon_ as a support ship during crucial battles. Leia promotes Poe from Commander to General so she can focus her attention on gathering allies and working towards reestablishing the Republic.

 

When Hux, the last of the First Order’s generals, is dragged before the Alliance’s tribunal — purple-faced, screaming, frothing at the mouth — Ben watches from the shadows of the chamber, his fingers twined with Rey’s.

 

He catches sight of Ben, and though Rey thinks it shouldn’t be possible for his face to go darker, his ugly, inky rage to permeate the air even more thickly — it does.

 

“Traitor!” he howls, and Rey remembers Kylo Ren bellowing the very same thing at Finn, standing in the snow on Starkiller Base, a gloved fist beating his wounds to feed his rage...

 

Ben simply shrugs, letting go of Rey’s hand so he can bring his arm up around her shoulders, and pull her body into his. She wraps her arms around his solid, muscle bound waist, clinging to him, and places a gentle kiss on his scar — _her_ scar, a permanent claim she’s marked him with — hidden by his grey shirt.

 

“You okay?” she murmurs.

 

Another shrug. “What can I say? He’s not wrong, but then—” He glances down at her, his smile fond and warm. “I’ve made my peace with that.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

One night, lying in their sleeper together, he swallows heavily, his warm hand passing up and down her bare back. He steals a glance at her, then looks away — Rey knows this tell. He wants to ask her something important.

 

“What is it, Ben?” she asks, looking up from her datapad, which she’s propped up on his stomach. Her head rests on his firm chest, one of her legs is slung over a thick thigh. This sleeping without clothes thing is an indulgence of hers — they have to be careful, when they're on base, that no one walks into their bunk and gets an accidental eyeful. But she loves the feel of the soft skin that covers his firm, bunched muscle — loves draping herself on top of him and just basking in his radiant heat. It reminds her a little bit of Jakku — but in a way that doesn't hurt.

 

Plus, she's never heard any complaints from Ben.

 

He sucks in a sharp breath, then blurts out, “What—what if I'd shut you out, after Crait? What if the darkness had consumed me, or I was never able to swallow my pride and return to the Light? What if we wasted our whole lives—not having this?”

 

There’s something in the way he’s staring at her, almost desperate — this is important to him. He _needs_ an answer, but Rey cannot discern why.

 

“Stop, it's too sad,” she says, shuddering as her eyes drift back to the datapad. “I hate even thinking that. Let’s just assume we’d always find our way to each other, somehow.”

 

“You're right, it _is_ too sad.” His voice breaks, just a slight crack, as he speaks.

 

She looks back to Ben, with his greying locks and his crow’s feet, then brushes her mind against his. The confused blur of images she sees there — a cautious smile, an unmarked door, a clenched fist, a bitter fruit dripping blood-red juice — doesn’t really help her understand the anguished look on his face, but, well, she flings the datapad away anyway. It bounces across the mattress and clatters to the floor.

 

“Whoops,” she quips, dryly. Then, in a more somber tone: “Come here, Ben.”

 

When he’s coiled tight around her, their legs a hopeless tangle and their torsos practically fused together, she whispers in his ear, “I’m not going anywhere, love, and we never have to be alone again.”

 

“Yes,” he sighs, his nose brushing her cheek as his lips seeks hers. “Never again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is the first longish canon-verse fic I've ever attempted. I've been living with it for about six months now, so I no longer have any idea if it's good or not and I would really love your feedback, if you have a minute. :) If that's not your thing, I understand and I still appreciate your reading. I'm also over on [Tumblr](https://voicedimplosives.tumblr.com/), where I will post a list of the many, many Wookieepedia pages I read through in order to write this fic, if _that's_ something that interests you.
> 
> Feel free to drop me a line here or on Tumblr, tell me what you thought, or just say hello. Otherwise, that's it from me. Thank you for reading! ♡


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